The rapid development of China’s industrial internet has injected fresh impetus into the country’s manufacturing industry, making it more intelligent through the application of more digital technologies.

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At an office of Hebei Andy Mould Co., Ltd. in north China’s Hebei province, Zhang Xiangui, general manager of the company, is seen clicking an operating panel to check production schedules and delivery times on the screen. Two years ago, he had to check this information by contacting the workshop and customers by telephone.

Working together with the industrial internet platform iSESOL has brought significant changes to the company. In the past, it offered quotations based on experience. Now, the company uses data, including processing fees and management costs collected by the platform. The platform also enables the company to calculate the processing time for each process, cutting the production scheduling time from four hours to half an hour.

Thanks to the industrial internet platform, the company can save over 300,000 yuan in management costs every year and increase production efficiency by about 30 percent, Zhang said.

Andy Mould is not the only company to benefit from the industrial internet. Previously, whenever equipment failure occurred, engineers from Ningxia Licheng Electric Group Co., Ltd. in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region didn’t know where the fault was until they began maintenance work. At the end of last year, the company partnered with the industrial internet platform Rootcloud and launched a remote operation and maintenance system.

By analyzing and collecting equipment data, the system can automatically send early warnings of potential faults in spare parts and ensure remote fault diagnosis, according to Xu Zhi, chief information officer of the company.

Another example is a smart home appliance cloud platform in Yuyao, east China’s Zhejiang province, which was launched in May by the China Unicom Ningbo branch and Yundee, a Chinese company that specialises in industrial internet platforms.

By sharing information such as supply and demand, production capacity, talents, and bidding, the platform helps the sector in the region realize the coordination of procurement, sales, supply, and production.

The platform has attracted companies in both the upstream and downstream of the home appliance sector, overcoming the shortcomings of the traditional manufacturing model, and making flexible production possible.

The smart manufacturing, remote equipment maintenance and flexible production solutions represented by the three companies are typical application scenarios for the industrial internet.

The industrial internet is not only a technology and a type of infrastructure, but also a new production method and business model, said Yu Xiaohui, deputy dean of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and secretary-general of the Alliance of Industrial Internet.

China will accelerate the development of the industrial internet through further integration of internet information technologies into the manufacturing sector.