AL INNOVATION
projects has been reduced to within 21 days, and the product yield rate has increased to over 94 percent,” Shi said.
Accelerate pace of digitalization
As the main battleground for high-end manufacturing in the city, Songjiang has in recent years accelerated the pace of digitalization in manufacturing, creating the “Songjiang Model.”
Last year, Songjiang announced a three-year plan to digitalize at least 85 percent of the district’s manufacturing enterprises by 2025.
The district is building five to 10 industrial Internet platforms in three years, opening more than 100,000 small and medium-sized businesses and incubating at least 10 major enterprises with the potential to radiate at least 400 upstream and downstream companies in the industry.
It will build three to five smart factories as benchmarks, as well as 30 to 40 exemplary smart factories, to create 200 to 250 intelligent manufacturing scenarios.
The three-year action plan aims to cultivate no less than 10 “industrial chain leaders.” Relying on industry leaders like Tencent and COSMOPlat, support and empowerment are provided to manufacturing enterprises, promoting companies such as ICKey, Lyfen, and Weben Smart to become city-level “industrial chain leaders.”
Meanwhile, a draft of “Policies and Measures for the Digital Transformation Development of the Manufacturing Industry in Songjiang” has been formulated to fully leverage the leading and pioneering role of policies.
This initiative encourages low-cost, high-efficiency transformation among small and medium-sized enterprises in the chain, accelerating the development of a comprehensive industry-wide digital transformation.
At the same time, there is a strong push for the construction of smart factories across the district.
Songjiang has three national-level intelligent factories, such as Noark Electric, 25 city-level smart factories, including Baolong Automotive, and 71 district-level smart manufacturing demonstration factories, such as the nation’s leading household appliance provider Haier.
Noark Electrics (Shanghai) has recently earned a spot on the list of 2023 Smart Manufacturing Demonstration Factories and Scenarios issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Its high-end electrical appliance smart factory showcases an impressive achievement in operational transparency, achieving over 90 percent in both automatic data collection of production information and the digital control of key equipment.
“The overall production efficiency is improved by more than 60 percent, while the production and operation costs are reduced by more than 15 percent,” said Liu Gaoqian, the project’s leader from Noark Shanghai. “It helps us achieve the digital transformation of the whole industrial chain, including R&D design, production mode, quality control, logistics and warehousing.”
A bunch of Songjiang-based companies and institutions are joining the tide of digital transformation, such as Shanghai Spaceflight Precision Machinery Institute, Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Electronics, Shanghai Zhongke Education Equipment Group, and many more.
Haier’s Shanghai washing machine smart facility in Shihudang Town started operations in 2022.
The project has four intelligent assembly lines, four smart module processing areas, and two intelligent logistics systems. It will create 2 million machines worth 5 billion yuan (US$742 million) annually.
“It’s estimated that by 2025, 80 percent of the industrial enterprises above the designated size in Songjiang will finish their digital transformation,” said Wu Qing from the district’s Science and Technology Commission.