A sub-forum of the New-gen Manufacturing Conference of Xuelang Town attracts plenty of industry insiders in Wuxi on July 1. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Experts and enterprises shared their opinions on how new technologies helped promote the development of the traditional manufacturing industry at a sub-forum of the New-gen Manufacturing Conference of Xuelang Town in Wuxi on July 1.

With the development of the digital economy, machines are replacing more and more people on assembly lines. Jiangsu Sunshine Group, a time-honored textile enterprise in Wuxi, employs artificial intelligence and computer vision technology in textile production.

"Defect detection is a key link in textile production and quality management. Manual detection was slow and lacked consistency," said Chen Lifen, chairman of the group. Chen explained that the use of a "robot eye" can save more than half the cost manual labor. The "robot eye" can also remember the defect data, providing references for later detection.

An official from Haixing Electrical Co Ltd gave a speech at the forum in which he said that Ding Talk, a mobile office automatic platform developed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, helped the company achieve more efficient and secure internal management.

Tian Liqiang, general manager of Chongqing Maishi Intelligent Manufacturing Co Ltd, played a video at the forum to show the company's "intelligent collaborative industrial internet equipment management platform", which can conduct remote operation and maintenance.

"We can keep an eye on the production site and find faults in real time," Tian said.

The platform helps manufacturing enterprises to learn about the production procedures at workshops and automatically generates reports by which enterprises can adjust production plans. Statistics show that the amount of data generated the internet of things reached 400 zettabytes in 2017. How to gain and deal with the data is regarded as a big challenge for enterprises in their quest for further development.

Yang Shusen, a professor from Xi'an Jiaotong University, proposed that in order to make good use of data, enterprises should attach more importance to infrastructure construction and IP system renewal and strengthen low latency and agility, which was key for the development of the industrial internet, unmanned driving and intelligent manufacturing.