In recent years Tongzhou district in Nantong, Jiangsu province has ramped up efforts to improve its intelligent manufacturing industry and promote industrial economic growth by guiding local manufacturing companies to speed up the intelligent transformation and boost construction of smart workshops focused on design, production, management and services.

The district government issued an implementation plan for the “Made in China 2025” strategy, suggestions on implementation of an Internet plus action plan and policies on boosting transformation of new industrialization with the aim of encouraging companies to promote intelligent technologies, information and industry integration, technology innovation and green development.

To date, the district has held six provincial demonstration smart workshops and 11 municipal ones, tops in Nantong.

Delphi Connectors (Nantong) Co has enjoyed benefit from intelligent manufacturing transformation, which helped the company reduce worker numbers from over 800 to 650.

According to the company’s operation director Shen Jiafeng, their workshops now can finish production automatically, as a central system is able to transmit materials to each unit of the intelligent production line. “A production line that used to require five workers now only needs one to operate and monitor,” Shen said.

Delphi ranked first for generated tax revenue among Tongzhou district’s industrial enterprises in 2017. Besides, its smart workshop for vehicle harness connectors was rated as a provincial demonstration smart workshop.

Guangdong Hongtu (Nantong) Die-Casting Co invested 100 billion yuan ($14.65 million) on a 50T final assembly line, which started test production in March this year and will go into mass production in August. The line is automated for everything from processing, packaging and monitoring to product cleaning. Tailor made for SAIC Motor, the line will be used for production of core component of SAIC’s new-generation engines. When fully operational, the line is expected to have production capability of at least 300,000 cylinder units.

The smart electronic-component workshop in Jiangsu Boto Tech Co has an all-in-one auto production line and a strict five-round testing mechanism. The number of smart devices accounts for 95 percent of the total devices in the workshops. The intelligence features helped increase the product quality acceptance ratio from 75 percent to more than 95 percent.