On December 3, 2024, Huawei held the "Huawei China Government and Enterprise Business Smart Manufacturing Media Communication Conference" in Chongqing. This event attracted wide attention from domestic media and industry experts. Participants visited the global demonstration site of Huawei & Chang'an Smart Factory and discussed the profound impact of digitalization and intelligent transformation on the manufacturing industry.

Exploring the Smart Factory: Future Manufacturing Integrating Advanced Technology

The Chang'an Automobile Digital Intelligence Factory in Chongqing is a globally leading "dark factory" for intelligent manufacturing, extensively applying over 40 cutting-edge technologies such as 5G, AI, and digital twins, featuring "intelligence, low carbon, and high efficiency."

During the construction of the Digital Intelligence Factory, Huawei was deeply involved. On the one hand, its years of digital transformation theory and experience have empowered Chang'an's digital transformation, becoming one of the reference methodologies. On the other hand, Chang'an Automobile adopted Huawei's new smart factory solution architecture of "one cloud, one network, one platform," building a solid digital foundation for the Digital Intelligence Factory and promoting industrial transformation towards intelligence.

In-depth Discussion: Discussing the Digital and Intelligent Future Together

After the visit, Yang Ping, General Manager of Huawei China Government and Enterprise Smart Manufacturing Business, and Qiu Heng, CMO of Huawei China Government and Enterprise, shared Huawei's achievements, experiences, and new industry value created in practicing digital and intelligent transformation in manufacturing and helping clients across industries with their digital transformation.

Yang Ping first detailed Huawei's strategic layout and practical applications in digital transformation and intelligent manufacturing. He noted that as a technology-focused enterprise, Huawei began information construction in the 1990s, launched its digital transformation in 2014, and initiated a comprehensive AI strategy in 2018. During this process, relying on its strong technological capabilities, Huawei achieved full-process intelligence across research, production, supply, marketing, and service. Yang Ping further shared Huawei's innovative practices in AI applications, mentioning extensive AI use in software development, manufacturing, and logistics supply.

For example, in the mobile phone production line, Huawei automatically retrieves BOM information from the R&D side based on intelligent scheduling results from market-side customer orders, transitioning from manual material picking to automatic material issuance, improving production efficiency and accuracy. In production quality management, AI-based quality inspection and analysis significantly enhanced the effectiveness of each quality inspection step.

In supply chain management, Huawei constructed flexible logistics solutions and intelligent optimization systems, making supply chain management more efficient in over 170 countries and regions globally. He specifically mentioned Huawei's optimization of logistics routes, inventory management, loading, and other aspects through large models, ensuring rapid response and efficient global logistics operations.

Certainly, Huawei's digital transformation capabilities serve not only vehicle equipment enterprises like Chang'an and GAC, but also semiconductor design and manufacturing enterprises, home appliance and electronics enterprises, new energy enterprises, biomedicine enterprises, the textile industry, the robotics industry, etc. For example, in the biomedicine industry, with huge upfront R&D costs, AI-assisted drug discovery can automatically simulate this process through large models. Addressing challenges faced by pharmaceutical companies in drug discovery, clinical trials, genetic analysis, etc., Huawei provides the Pangu Drug Molecule Large Model, trained on 1.7 billion drug molecule data points, significantly saving labor and time for pharmaceutical companies, thereby effectively reducing costs and increasing competitiveness. In the robotics industry, drawing on its own R&D transformation experience, leading robotics enterprises have created an IPD management system, reshaping structured R&D processes and achieving coordinated management of R&D and production quality, greatly reducing R&D and manufacturing costs.

Regarding the "digital divide" in industry transformation, Qiu Heng, CMO of Huawei China Government and Enterprise, stated that Huawei China Government and Enterprise Business aims to "leave complexity to ourselves and bring simplicity to customers," helping large, medium, and small enterprises in China easily adopt digitalization through the "partner + Huawei" system. He noted that Huawei not only provides advanced technical support but also shares its extensive industry digitalization practical experience. Through the "partner + Huawei" system, Huawei offers thoughtful service and a local team, replicating successful experiences widely to enable more industry clients to "instantly access the digital world." Qiu Heng emphasized that through in-depth cooperation with partners, Huawei has successfully helped over 7,500 manufacturing enterprises achieve digital transformation.

Simultaneously, regarding how Huawei achieves "capability spillover," Qiu Heng pointed out that Huawei's foundation for capability spillover lies in its strong technological innovation and accumulation. He detailed Huawei's technological advantages in computing power, storage capacity, and transportation capacity, especially innovations in core technologies such as Ascend, Kunpeng, and Euler. He mentioned that Huawei has been a leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage for eight consecutive years, and its OceanStor A800 storage product significantly enhances the availability and performance of AI clusters. Additionally, Huawei's innovations in network technology provide strong support for different industries, especially in Wi-Fi 7 and F5G full-optical network technology. Through high-performance network solutions, Huawei helps manufacturing enterprises improve production efficiency and network security.

Qiu Heng emphasized that "different industries share common principles despite their differences." Despite varying industry demands, the service logic of digital transformation is universal. Through architecture-first, platform-first, scenario innovation, and iterative progress, Huawei helps various industries build intelligent agent reference architectures, advancing intelligent perception, connectivity, platform construction, and the application of large AI models. He concluded that digital growth is closely related to the enhancement of new-type productivity. Huawei is committed to promoting high-quality industry development through technological innovation and ecological cooperation.

Looking Ahead: Driving a New Era of Global Smart Manufacturing

With the advent of the wave of intelligent and digital transformation, the successful experience of the Huawei & Chang'an Smart Factory global demonstration site has set a new benchmark for the industry. In the future, Huawei will continue to deepen cooperation with manufacturing enterprises, promoting the widespread application of digital and intelligent technologies. Through the innovative integration of cloud computing, 5G, big data, AI, and other technologies, Huawei will provide digital transformation solutions for more enterprises, supporting various industries in achieving efficient and sustainable development.

As smart factories continue to gain popularity, more enterprises will achieve qualitative changes in manufacturing through digital and intelligent transformation. As a technology driver and practitioner of industry digitization, Huawei will play an increasingly important role in this process, propelling the entire industry towards higher quality and more intelligent development.