General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized at the symposium on promoting the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt in all aspects that enterprises should be bold in innovation, stick to focusing economic development on the real economy, and center on the upgrading of industrial foundation and modernization of industrial chain to exert general advantages of coordination linkage mechanism, so as to comprehensively create new advantages for innovation-driven development.
As the manufacturing industry is the mainstay of the real economy, and intelligent manufacturing is the key strategy to speed up the construction of a self-controllable advanced manufacturing industrial system and push forward high-quality development of the real economy.
From January to September, Nanjing has created a 3.3% increase in regional GDP and completed a year-on-year increase of 4.5% in its industrial growth value above designated size, ranking at the first place among the top 10 cities in China’s GDP in terms of industrial economic growth and fully reflecting its favorable resilience of urban economic development.
Such great achievement is closely related to the vigorous development of intelligent manufacturing in Nanjing.
Driven by a new engine, the resilience of the real economy is enhanced to defend against the epidemic.
When walking into the workshop of Nari-Relays, you can see multiple intelligent mechanical arms are on their duties along the highly-intelligent production line with just a few workmen.
Nari-Relays is specialized in electricity protection and R&D and industrialization of intelligent power equipment for power grids, power stations, and diverse industrial and mining enterprises and it is the largest R&D and industrialization base in this field in China. Its core products have domestically ranked first by market occupancy for consecutive years.
“In terms of Industrial Internet, industrial internet solutions with industrial data collection and processing as well as analysis and optimization functions as its cores have been formulated, covering the integration of multiple specialities.” Relevant heads of Nari-Relays introduced. They also take the initiative to grab the high ground of the integration of 5G technology and power business. So far, a joint laboratory for power grid business based on 5G transmission has been established.
Unremitting exploration and practice in the field of intelligent manufacturing make Nari-Relays go “fast forward” in production resumption during the epidemic period. It has rapidly plunged into major projects such as the "Zhangbei Flexible Direct Current Power Grid Project", which creates exponential growth in the production capacity of the workshop in the first quarter and promotes the coordinated development of upstream and downstream industries.
The integrated development of the information industry and the manufacturing industry is promoting the growth of intelligent manufacturing and developing into the new engine to propel the real economy’s upgrading and enhancing development resilience of the real economy in adverse environments such as the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-globalization.
As one of the leading brands of industrial automatization and robots in China, Nanjing Estun Automation Co., Ltd. gathered technological resources and adopted modulized designs in the fighting against the epidemic to provide dozens of facial mask equipment producers with solutions and core parts in early February.
In its automatic folding mask machine production line, the company applied Trio motion controller and chose ESTUN’s servo system as its core controlling solution, which shortened its debugging period to 3 days, made its production efficiency reach a leading position in the industry, and further solved the problem of labor-intensive enterprises' employment difficulty, making extraordinary contributions to epidemic prevention and control.
From manufacturing to “intelligent manufacturing”, traditional industries are stepping into higher-end industrial transformation and upgrading.
China is the No.1 manufacturer across the globe and it is by relying on intelligent manufacturing that industrial types of resources consumption, environmental pollution, product production can be transformed and upgraded into new types such as quality benefit, green manufacturing, and "production+service" for the traditional manufacturing industry.
In WIMC this year, Nanjing Nangang Iron & Steel United Co., Ltd. (NISCO), as a leading enterprise transformed and upgraded from traditional industry, will present at the Cloud Expo with its “JIT+C2M Intelligent Factory”.
On July 8, NISCO’s JIT+C2M Intelligent Factory was officially put into production. “JIT (Just in Time) refers to production pattern under the Just-in-Time system, while C2M refers to "Customer to Maker”. Introduced Fei Kun, Deputy General Manager of the Business Division of NISCO.
In the "JIT+C2M intelligent factory", all equipment is operating automatically in an orderly way and front-line operators are all sitting in the "control room", manipulating production equipment through intelligent computers. All mechanical arms and all delivery turntables are able to automatically complete customized production, processing, labeling, and stacking for steel plates and materials without any production workman on the spot.
Currently, the real economy is encountering two major issues, the over-supply of inefficient and low-end supplies and the insufficiency of efficient and quality supplies. Therefore, deepening reform is the way to boost the industry. As a local model enterprise in the manufacturing industry, NISCO is leading constant industrial transformation and upgrading across traditional industries in Nanjing and leading them to stride forward towards a higher level of intelligent manufacturing development.
As a pioneering enterprise in the field of intelligent power grids in Nanjing, Guodian Nanjing Automation Co., Ltd. has commenced its implementation of "intelligent manufacturing of power equipment" project that applies digitalization and informationalization technologies to transform and upgrade traditional factories and supports enterprises to realize their transformation and upgrading featuring "manufacturing+quality manufacturing+intelligent manufacturing".
"This project covers the whole process of products line from R&D, production, and logistics to marketing and product services." Relevant personnel in charge of the company suggested. According to the personnel, the construction of the digital manufacturing platform of the NEW MES system makes the interconnection of equipment's intelligent manufacturing come true and improves the automation level of the whole production process in all aspects. By developing the NEW MES system for small-batch production pattern with multiple power product categories, the "information island" phenomenon in the implementation of production planning can be circumvented and refined management can be realized in terms of manufacturing data, planned production capacity, production progress, stock number, quality, technological documents, etc.
According to the Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, Nanjing, by empowering the new economy, continuously promotes the intellectualized transformation of traditional industrial enterprises and builds an intelligent manufacturing ecosystem in an attempt to improve production efficiency and development quality in an all-round way.
Nanjing is speeding up the popularization of intelligent equipment and has driven industrial enterprises to increase their equipment investment by nearly RMB 10 billion through the construction of intelligent factories and workshops while implementing the action plan on the new infrastructure, new consumption, new industry, and new city and introducing a three-year action plan on the digital economy to vigorously develop the new infrastructure such as 5G and the Industrial Internet and promote the integrated development of the digital economy and the manufacturing industry dominated by big data and blockchain.
So far, Nanjing has cultivated a number of key intelligent manufacturing enterprises featuring strong independent innovation and prominent main business, such as Nanjing Nangang Iron & Steel United Co., Ltd. (NISCO), Nanjing Kangni Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. (Kangni), and Nanjing Estun Automation Company. Besides, Nanjing has built 66 provincial intelligent workshops and 44 municipal intelligent factories. Annually, nearly 5,000 sets of self-owned industrial robots can be yielded. A favorable pattern of coordinated development in the intelligent manufacturing application and its service has been formed.
Developing the intelligent manufacturing equipment to energize high-quality development momentum of the industry chain
Developing intelligent manufacturing can contribute to the improvement and optimization of the layout of the high-end industry chain, and the accelerated implementation of new-generation information and communication technologies such as robot products, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence (AI), the Industrial Internet, and 5G communication, as well as the coordinated development of the upstream and downstream industry chains, thus facilitating the rapid development of regional science and technology and economy.
Based on the new development pattern and focusing on eight industries including intelligent manufacturing equipment, AI, and new energy automobiles, Nanjing acts as a pioneer implementing the "chain leader system" guided by municipal leaders and the industry chain mapping operation, in a bid to cultivate a number of "chain-leading enterprises", "hidden champions" and key parks for each industry chain with all-out efforts. With the autonomous and controllable principle at the core, the industry chains in key fields have been consolidated and improved, and multiple measures have been taken to promote the steady growth of the industrial economy. In the first three quarters of this year, in the intelligent manufacturing industry, the added values of integrated circuits, new energy automobiles, smart power grids, and rail transit increased by 36%, 23.6%, 19.4%, and 17.2% respectively, playing an exemplary role in boosting the city's economy.
Among them, intelligent manufacturing equipment functions as the cornerstone of intelligent manufacturing development. Developing intelligent manufacturing equipment is of great significance for speeding up the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, improving production efficiency and product quality, reducing energy consumption, and realizing intelligent and green manufacturing processes.
According to the relevant official of Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, in recent years, Nanjing has stayed abreast of the development trend of the intelligent manufacturing equipment industry and regarded it as essential support for middle- and high-end development of intelligent manufacturing and industries. Besides, actions have been taken to accelerate the integration of manufacturing and the Internet to boost the transformation of the traditional manufacturing industry into a digital, networked, and intelligent one. In 2019, the main business income of the intelligent manufacturing equipment industry in Nanjing reached about RMB 54 billion, accounting for 24.8% of that of the city's advanced manufacturing industry.
With intelligent manufacturing as a new engine, emphasis will be placed on consolidating and improving industry chains with the intelligent manufacturing equipment industry to promote the integration of advanced information technology and manufacturing, thus bringing high-quality development benefits with greater scale and higher efficiency to Nanjing's real economy.
According to the 2019 City Development Index in the Advanced Manufacturing Industry, Nanjing ranked 9th on the list of China's top 50 cities with strong strength in advanced manufacturing.
