Shenzhen fosters competitive digital industrial clusters

At a dust-free smart factory of TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. (TCL CSOT) in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong province, production lines were operating with high efficiency to produce spare parts for the 11th-generation ultra-high-definition displays.

"The factory is larger than the total area of six football pitches and it produces tens of thousands of display panels every day, achieving intelligent manufacturing in many production processes," said Chen Shengzhong, senior vice president of TCL CSOT.

Chen said that in the past, more than 100 workers were needed to detect internal circuit defects of a display screen, but nowadays the efficiency has increased 15 times thanks to the introduction of an intelligent quality check system.

"The intelligent fault detection system is more accurate, and only 10 workers are needed to assist the system in the detection," Chen added.

Participants attend the 24th China Hi-Tech Fair (CHTF) in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong province. (Photo/Shenzhen Special Zone Daily)

As a powerhouse in China's electronic information manufacturing and the software and information technology service industry, Shenzhen nurtures various industries, including the high-definition display industry, communications equipment, integrated circuit, software, and industrial Internet.

In 2021, the added value of the core industries of the digital economy in Shenzhen exceeded 900 billion yuan ($128.8 billion), accounting for 30.5 percent of the city's GDP. The size and quality of these industries ranked among the country's top.

Digitalization not only benefits enterprises, but also the whole industrial cluster.　

The Shenzhen factory of Hytera Communications Corporation is the largest walkie-talkie production base in the world.

To build one walkie-talkie, more than 1,000 electronic components are needed. As the components are from several hundred suppliers, the collaboration between the production base and the suppliers is not easy.

"In the past, we sent e-mails to the suppliers to tell them the number of components we would need and when we would like to receive the components. If there was a change in the order, it would be difficult to make adjustments," said Sun Meng, a senior vice president at Hytera Communications Corporation.

Last year, the company launched a digital supplier management system, which has remarkably improved coordination between the company and its suppliers. With the system, the suppliers can prepare components based on the demand, and the manufacturer can know about the status of the delivery in a timely manner.

Photo taken on Nov. 13, 2022 shows night view of Futian district, Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong province. (People's Daily Online/Wang Meiyan)

"Electronic information manufacturing pushes forward digitalization here in Shenzhen as the city gathers a lot of suppliers providing digital solutions," said Li Jingnan, general manager of Saisheng Digital Economy Research Center (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.

Inside the lights-off factory of tech giant Foxconn Industrial Internet (FII), all manufacturing goes on automatically, including the handling of materials, quality check, and logistics operations. Many technologies have been applied to support automated manufacturing here at the factory, including WeMake, an industrial Internet platform by Tencent.

The manufacturing data is transmitted to the cloud platform, and after it is analyzed by such technologies as artificial intelligence, a new solution for optimizing manufacturing is generated, explained Cao Lei, vice president of Tencent Cloud, who is also in charge of smart manufacturing at Tencent.

To date, WeMake has provided services for 420,000 manufacturing enterprises in 26 sectors, and shared more than 4,900 industrial applications, effectively helping lower the threshold of digitalization for the manufacturing sector.

In addition to big digital service providers, suppliers offering small but specialized solutions have sprung up in Shenzhen.

Shenzhen Getech Technology Co., Ltd., a company specializing in the application of industrial data, has built nearly 30,000 industrial models and gained mature capability in software development.

"In the past, the domestic semiconductor industry relied on imports of foreign industrial software. Through diligent research, we've replaced foreign-built core industrial software, including the computer integrated manufacturing system, with domestically built software," said Liu Fengyang, who was sent by Shenzhen Getech Technology Co., Ltd. to work as director of the client success department at the IT delivery center of TCL CSOT.

Photo shows the exhibition hall of TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong province. (Photo/Shenzhen Press Group)

Why are there so many digital solution providers in Shenzhen?

Shenzhen has many manufacturing clusters and an enormous market demand. Liu introduced that in Shenzhen and its surrounding areas, there are a lot of medium- and high-end manufacturing clusters, such as the electronic information industrial cluster. These companies have high expectations for the precision of their products and upgrade them at a fast pace. This requires the enterprises to constantly improve their quality and efficiency. Digital solutions can help them in this respect.

Shenzhen boasts developed infrastructure and a solid industrial foundation. Currently, there are 64,000 5G base stations in Shenzhen, and the density of 5G base stations in the city ranks among the highest in the country, an official from the Industry and Information Technology Bureau of Shenzhen introduced, adding that Shenzhen has achieved remarkable results in commercial deployment and large-scale application of 5G, laying a solid foundation for the vigorous growth of the digital economy.

The local government in Shenzhen has put a lot of money into the digital economy. The first-class business environment and innovative talent policies also attract high-end factors to the city.