Currently, the waves of digitalization are surging forward, with new technologies, business models, and paradigms providing unprecedented vast space and opportunities for digital empowerment. What sparks will fly when digitalization "collides" with traditional manufacturing?

The answer represents a giant leap forward.

From "manufacturing" to "intelligent manufacturing," this change of just one word signifies a comprehensive, multi-faceted, and full-chain transformation in production forms, development methods, and management systems, marking a significant leap towards high-quality development.

Anhui, striving to build itself into a powerhouse of manufacturing, is accelerating the digital transformation of its industrial sector and actively fostering new quality productive forces. Empowered by digital technologies, traditional manufacturing enterprises are being revitalized, gaining new momentum for takeoff.

Taking Chery, an automobile manufacturing company, as an example, the welding workshop of Chery's first smart factory has over 660 intelligent robots working collaboratively, with an automation rate of 97%, making it a model for intelligent manufacturing in the domestic automotive industry.

Consider Conch Group, a heavyweight in traditional manufacturing. By deploying the world's first "AI + cement building materials" large model, only one Baima Mountain Cement Factory can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 4,500 tons annually and save more than 2 million yuan in costs each year.

From "pioneering breakthroughs" to "widespread transformation," digitalization has driven comprehensive upgrades in regional industrial quality. By the end of the first quarter of this year, all 24,600 industrial enterprises above designated size in the province had initiated digital transformation. In 2024, the province's high-quality manufacturing development index rose from seventh to fifth place nationally.

Evidently, digital transformation combines manufacturing strengths with connectivity and intelligence, enhancing production flexibility and precision. This enables flexible, green, and smart manufacturing, effectively reducing costs while boosting productivity—ultimately maximizing corporate profitability and serving as a powerful engine for upgrading regional industrial economies.

At present, our province is accelerating the construction of a modern industrial system that embodies Anhui's characteristics. In promoting digital transformation, Anhui closely follow the frontier of the new scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, take empowering new industrialization with artificial intelligence as the main line, and continue to exert efforts in strengthening the guarantee of digital transformation work, accelerating digital transformation, focusing on cultivating typical scenarios and solutions, and vigorously enhancing the service capacity of digital transformation. Anhui aim to push the digital transformation of manufacturing in the province to a deeper level and a higher standard.

Source: Anhui Daily