Since the reform and opening-up, China’s manufacturing sector has developed rapidly. In 2010, its output value officially surpassed that of the United States, making China the world’s largest manufacturing country. However, at the same time, China’s manufacturing industry is facing numerous challenges, including the waning demographic dividend, severe product homogenization, low technological content, and a production model characterized by high energy consumption and heavy pollution—none of which can meet the demands of economic development. There is an urgent need for the industry to undergo transformation and upgrading, and a pressing need to shift its production model toward modern digital and intelligent transformation centered on data and intelligence.

Digital Intelligence Engineering

In May 2015, the State Council released "Made in China 2025," outlining a three-step strategic approach. Zhejiang Province also began conducting evaluations of future factories starting in 2020, guiding enterprises to gradually undergo transformation. It is precisely against this backdrop that, beginning in March of last year, Wanxiang Qianchao, building on its "Add a Zero After Ten Years of Struggle" initiative and taking into account its own specific circumstances, embarked on a comprehensive upgrade from three key aspects—globalization, competitiveness, and industrial interconnectivity—with the goal of enhancing overall competitiveness and achieving digital and intelligent operations, thus launching its digital and intelligent transformation project. By establishing lighthouse factories and future factories, Wanxiang Qianchao aims to achieve first-class production and operational excellence, forge synergies to build an external ecosystem, promote collaboration across the industrial chain, facilitate connections with key strategic customers and integration with international platforms, and thereby boost Wanxiang Qianchao's high-quality, all-round development.

In terms of working methodology, the Wanxiang Qianchao Digital Intelligence Innovation Center, together with the digital intelligence task forces of its various branches and subsidiaries, has conducted over 200 discussion sessions and "ideation meetings," carrying out top-down goal setting and bottom-up goal breakdown. Large-scale objectives are broken down into specific, phased tasks, forming a series of initiatives and milestones that are steadily advanced step by step. The digital intelligence task forces have established a working mechanism that includes daily stand-up meetings for analysis, weekly TO meetings for progress tracking and issue resolution, and biweekly reports for project updates, ensuring that digital intelligence projects are promoted in an orderly and effective manner. In practice, Wanxiang Qianchao continuously optimizes and adjusts its working mechanisms to ensure that projects can always proceed efficiently.

In terms of content, the Digital Intelligence Project simultaneously achieves Wanxiang Qianchao’s all-in-one network coverage and delivers tangible financial benefits. It comprehensively and multi-dimensionally supports the overall development and enhancement of Wanxiang Qianchao in areas such as KPI and performance management system establishment, organizational and process optimization, capability building, and value potential exploration. Specifically, the Digital Intelligence Project first completed the overall blueprint design for all-in-one network coverage, starting with production operations, procurement supply chains, and the industrial internet, and gradually expanding to other domains including finance, human resources, marketing, and R&D. To support the realization of this all-in-one network coverage blueprint, Wanxiang Qianchao first reorganized and optimized its organizational structure, defining posts and staffing levels for each department and position. It then designed KPIs and established a performance dialogue system tailored to the responsibilities of each position, creating a continuous improvement mechanism centered around data-driven and performance-based dialogue processes. Meanwhile, the Digital Intelligence Project also focused on business needs by conducting employee capability-building initiatives, offering more than 30 specialized training programs in total. Furthermore, the Digital Intelligence Project aimed at unlocking value potential, taking action from multiple angles—including UPPH improvement, OEE enhancement, cost reduction, supplier integration, and category strategy optimization—to deliver comprehensive benefits for Wanxiang Qianchao. To date, the Digital Intelligence Project has formulated 331 initiatives across organizational structure, training, procurement, production operations, and the industrial internet, of which 67 have already been completed.

Digital and intelligent operations are an inevitable trend and also the direction forward for Wanxiang Qianchao. Wanxiang Qianchao will carry forward Lu Guanqiu’s spirit, continue to tackle tough challenges and foster innovation, steadfastly advance its digital and intelligent initiatives, unite hearts and minds to enhance performance, and in this era of unprecedented global transformation, keep setting trends and continuously surpassing ourselves.