Wuxi manufacturing goes high-tech

Leaders plan to retain industry dominance by focusing on IoT, big data, Chen Hong reports from Wuxi.

The government of Wuxi, a long-time manufacturing hub in East China's Jiangsu province, has encouraged local manufacturers to improve their efficiency by upgrading with internet of things technologies.

"Manufacturing was important in the history of Wuxi, which turned a small farming county into a metropolis. Now, our strategy is to keep the dominance of the industry as an impetus to drive forward the economic development of the city," said Li Xiaomin, Party chief of Wuxi, during a new-generation manufacturing conference in June.

Official figures show that last year, the manufacturing industry accounted for 43.3 percent of the city's total GDP, which amounted 1.05 trillion yuan ($153 billion), ranking Wuxi the 13th among Chinese mainland cities.

It also contributes at least 96 percent of the city's industrial added-value and 52.6 percent of the tax revenue, the figures indicate.

"The manufacturing sector should be integrated profoundly with IoT, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence to get smarter," Li stressed.

In 2015, after experiencing a slowdown in its industrial development - as happened to much of the country's manufacturing sector - the city created policies to reaffirm the dominant position of advanced manufacturing in its modern industrial system and pledged to make that system stronger.

The city issued a three-year action plan for smart manufacturing in early 2017 and worked out its implementation plans for 2018 at the beginning of the year.

"The government is encouraging the application of technologies and products from IoT to improve the efficiency for industries ranging from manufacturing and transportation to management and sales," Wang Jinjian, vice-mayor of Wuxi, told China Daily in a recent interview.

When a company intends to upgrade its operations, the government will provide free support to determine which parts it can improve and what kind of technologies it could use, Wang said.

After that, the company can receive subsidies from the government to carry out the technical upgrade in at least nine areas, including manufacturing, transportation, sales and aftersales services.

The government is also building a databank to match the companies that need the upgrading services with the technology and products providers, Wang said.

According to this year's implementation plans, the city government plans to offer diagnosis and support to 100 companies to help them to upgrade using intelligent technologies and solutions.

The total amount spent on the smart manufacturing upgrades will reach 15 billion yuan this year.

The government has also set targets in the implementation plans that at least 15 manufacturing plants are to be upgraded to smart manufacturing models at the provincial level, 15 companies to serve as examples for the innovative internet-industry integration at the provincial level and five projects to become provincial-level demonstration models for applications of IoT in industry.

In order to improve product quality, at least 30 projects are expected to make breakthroughs in techniques that are key to improving the quality of manufacturing, according to the plan.

The government also plans to introduce and cultivate 20 total-solution providers for smart manufacturing.

Official figures indicate that the government's efforts have so far paid off as strong industries have emerged and rapid growth has been reported in the city. The city's per capita GDP was ranked the second among major Chinese cities in 2017, just after Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong province.

Wuxi's industrial added-value increased by 8.6 percent year-on-year in 2017, surpassing the provincial average for the first time in 13 years. The index surged 10.4 percent from a year before in the first five months of this year, ranking first in the province.

So far, the city has completed 270 smart manufacturing projects using a total investment of 230.8 billion yuan, according to the city government.

Among these is Wuxi First Cotton Mill, established in 1919, which carried out an intelligent upgrade of its manufacturing process and has become a role model for the industry.

After the revamp, the company now employs fewer than 20 workers per 10,000 spindles, or one-fourth of the industry's average level, reaching the world's highest level in terms of performance.

Production efficiency has been enhanced by 23 percent, quality has been improved by 25 percent while operating costs have been lowered by 22.6 percent.