Hubei Province's industrial output above a designated size grew by 8.9% year-on-year in the first half of the year, outperforming the national average. From optoelectronics to specialty steel, and from century-old factories to startups, the question is how digital technology is altering every step of industrial production and how smart manufacturing is energizing this industrial powerhouse's new quality productive forces.
At the FiberHome Telecommunications optical cable digital manufacturing park in Wuhan, Hubei, reporters observed multiple types of communication optical cables continuously rolling off the production line. Zhang Chenglong, General Manager of the FiberHome Manufacturing Center, noted that traditional manufacturing relied entirely on manual material retrieval, which involved heavy transportation work. Through digital and intelligent transformation, the company has achieved data connectivity across the entire production supply chain. By building a "5G + Industrial Internet" platform, the enterprise has equipped the entire process of optical preform manufacturing, fiber drawing, and cable forming with "data eyes." Using optimization algorithms, it has enabled intelligent material allocation and flexible order scheduling, shortening the product delivery cycle by 30%.
Alongside efficiency gains, smart manufacturing is penetrating core production processes. Recently, FiberHome successfully developed the world's largest optical fiber preform in terms of size, setting a new industry record. A reporter, Song Wenjin, noted that this preform, with a diameter of 0.3 meters and an effective length of 3.5 meters, can produce 20,000 kilometers of optical fiber. The company's self-developed flame intelligent algorithm can monitor the flame angle, root distance, and color temperature changes during the preform production process in real-time, automatically adjusting process parameters to eliminate potential production anomalies early, thereby significantly improving the product yield rate.
Xie Kang, General Manager of FiberHome Wuhan Fiberhome Ruituo Technology Co., Ltd., explained that the past relied on manual inspection to detect anomalies. AI recognition helps quickly and early identify anomalies throughout the production process, enhancing manufacturing efficiency and quality. The company has now established a digital quality management platform covering the entire product lifecycle, with the yield rates of optical fiber preforms and fibers maintaining industry-leading levels. Current orders extend into next year. Simultaneously, the enterprise is using the complete data from fiber and cable R&D and production to train industry-specific large models, forming high-quality industry datasets to provide replicable practical experience for the development of optoelectronics and other emerging industries.
Wu Ping, General Manager of the FiberHome Operations Management Department, stated that the company possesses the complete set of processes from preform manufacturing to fiber drawing and cabling, along with over 20 years of accumulated manufacturing process data. It also has a dedicated big data company and underlying computing power, which can be integrated to become a provider of smart manufacturing solutions for the optical fiber and cable industry.
AI Empowers a Century-Old Steel Plant to Forge a New Path
In Huangshi, Hubei, Daye Special Steel has built the industry's first full-process industrial internet platform for global steel pipe production. AI and digital technology are deeply embedded in the production line, driving the continuous advancement of flexible manufacturing capabilities for special seamless steel pipes. At the digital intelligence center of the Daye Special Steel 460 Steel Pipe Plant, tens of thousands of data streams refresh in real-time on a large screen. A digital twin system controls the entire production line's operation with millisecond-level precision. The traditional model of large-batch, standardized production is gradually fading, giving way to multi-variety, small-batch, high-precision customized production. At the 460 Steel Pipe Plant, the production line completes a process changeover every half hour on average, adjusting all production parameters for orders from around the world.
Ma Jinhui, Director of the Quality Assurance Department at the Research Institute of Daye Special Steel Co., Ltd., pointed out that for each order, the number of steel pipes to be supplied to a customer is specified. In traditional steel production, such a small quantity of pipes per order makes production organization extremely difficult. To solve this problem, the company has invested nearly 1 billion yuan in a full-process digital and intelligent transformation, turning the 460 Steel Pipe Plant into one of the first batch of national-level excellent smart factories in the special steel industry. By relying on its self-built integrated industrial internet platform, the factory has converted the practical experience of several generations of rolling mill technicians into automatically executable data, which is then fed into an AI large model. Previously, a scheduler took over half a day to compile a weekly production plan; now, the system can generate the optimal plan in minutes, reducing the waiting time for cross-steel-grade and cross-specification production changes by 70%.
Digital and intelligent transformation brings more than just efficiency gains. In the past, after steel pipes were produced, workers had to manually measure them with micrometers and conduct batch sampling, making it difficult to cover all potential defects. Now, from the entry of a steel billet to the final product storage, each pipe generates over 20,000 production data points, creating a unique "digital growth diary" for every pipe. Each pipe is also stamped with its own exclusive digital "ID card." Tang Ke, Plant Manager of the Daye Special Steel 460 Steel Pipe Plant, explained that this allows for monitoring of every individual pipe, automatically accumulating and collecting optimal parameters and data to standardize the entire process and reduce deviations. In the first quarter of this year, the supply capacity of high-end specialty products from this steel enterprise continued to rise, with the production volume of high-grade varieties increasing by 8.5% year-on-year and 370 new types of special steel being developed. The company is shifting from homogeneous competition in ordinary steel to a new track of domestic substitution for high-end special steel.
Ecological Collaboration Drives AI+ Manufacturing to Unleash New Quality Productive Forces
As the "AI+" action plan deepens, smart manufacturing is not only improving efficiency and quality for local manufacturing enterprises in Hubei but also giving rise to a new track of industrial intelligent services. At the production scheduling center of an industrial intelligent solution provider in Wuhan, Hubei, a vertical large model for the semiconductor industry is running at high speed, with the screen displaying real-time production line data from nearly 100 partner manufacturing enterprises inside and outside the province. Leveraging a full-chain digital diagnostic and intelligent transformation service, the company's order volume has seen rapid growth in the first half of the year, with output value increasing by over 10% year-on-year. Liu Liang, R&D Director of the EAS Semiconductor Division at Gongdong Chuangzhi, noted that many factories previously had weak automation and intelligence capabilities. The company is empowering these enterprises, offering a closed-loop solution from consulting to final implementation and delivery, helping them enhance their industrial capabilities.
In the first half of this year, the local government released the "Hubei Province AI + Manufacturing Action Implementation Plan," building a comprehensive policy support system covering aspects like computing power infrastructure, application scenario opening, and high-end talent cultivation. It supports joint research between local AI service companies and manufacturing enterprises, turning production workshops into "testing grounds" and "implementation sites" for AI technology, allowing the technology to iterate and mature while solving real production problems. Meanwhile, to address the common dilemma of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises being "unwilling or afraid to transform," Hubei is building a provincial-level public service platform. This platform integrates technical resources from universities, research institutes, and AI companies to offer lightweight, low-cost smart transformation solutions, continuously lowering the barrier for enterprise transformation. With the accelerated layout of future industries like the low-altitude economy and humanoid robots, the local government is also working to bridge the gap between AI technology and emerging industrial scenarios.
Zhou Xiao, Deputy Director of the Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Industry Division at the Hubei Provincial Department of Economy and Information Technology, stated that the province is building a provincial-level computing power interconnection platform and a provincial-level intelligent agent public service platform. These will provide a one-stop public service from data to algorithms, computing power, models, and intelligent agents for manufacturing enterprises across the province, offering strong momentum for the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, the growth of emerging industries, and the forward-looking layout of future industries. Looking ahead to the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, Hubei will continue to implement an "AI Scenario Opening Action," releasing over 100 typical AI application demonstration projects annually to promote the deep integration of AI technology into all industries, injecting new vitality into the central industrial hub.