As the first rays of morning sunlight streamed through the high windows of Dongyue Technology's production workshop, the electronic display boards had already lit up on schedule. Gone were the days of walkie-talkies crackling back and forth, and no more workshop supervisors dashing around clutching paper reports. Instead, streams of data quietly scrolled and updated across the screens. "We used to have staff walk from station to station with notebooks to manually record data—your legs would be sore by the end of the day. Now, we can see the entire operation from the central control room." Pointing at the numbers on the board with a hint of pride, the production manager at Dongyue Technology described a workshop where machines have essentially learned to "speak for themselves." A comprehensive digital transformation centered on intelligent manufacturing is now being rolled out across Dongping County.

Smart equipment operates in orderly fashion inside the Dongyue Technology production facility. (Photo provided by correspondent)

"Intelligent manufacturing sounds great, but our factory has a weak foundation. If we really want to implement a new system, where do we even start?" This was a common worry among managers of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in Dongping County. Rather than adopting a blanket, one-size-fits-all approach, the county conducted thorough, full-coverage assessments of manufacturing firms, helping them complete comprehensive "health check-ups" of their smart manufacturing maturity levels. They established a three-tier dynamic cultivation ledger—categorized as "Potential Reserve," "Foundation-Level Cultivation," and "Advanced-Level Sprint"—and placed 15 enterprises on the annual key cultivation list. This methodical, echelon-based promotion was akin to tending seedlings. As of 2026, the county has already cultivated 9 new foundation-level smart factories and 2 advanced-level smart factories. The "reserve force" is growing, and the "trailblazers" are getting stronger, achieving a simultaneous leap in both quantity and quality.

Reports indicate that many companies initially had no idea where to begin with digital transformation, fearing that high investments would not yield returns or that they would hit technological bottlenecks halfway through. To tackle these real problems of "not knowing how to transform, not daring to transform, and transforming poorly," the Dongping County Bureau of Industry and Information Technology has brought smart manufacturing experts directly to the production front lines. These experts conduct one-on-one "diagnoses" for enterprises, identifying every weakness in equipment networking and system integration along the production lines, and crafting customized upgrade checklists for each company. For enterprises with weak foundations, the primary push is towards low-cost, streamlined upgrades that allow them to reap digital dividends without major overhauls. For companies with a solid base aiming to benchmark against the best, the focus is on guiding the deployment of high-end applications like intelligent production scheduling and machine vision quality inspection, fully unblocking data flows that were previously siloed and helping them firmly navigate the "deep waters" of transformation.

Today, the dividends of intelligent manufacturing are genuinely taking root on the factory floors of Dongping County. After Dongyue Technology's production line upgrades, overall equipment effectiveness has steadily climbed to 99.5%, product pass rates have hit 99.9%, and annual raw material consumption has dropped directly by 8%. On Guangdasailu's production line, staffing has been reduced by more than half, yet maximum production capacity has increased by a factor of 1.6. Within these workshops across Dongping County, a quiet "data revolution" is accelerating its growth. The machinery continues to roar, but the "thinking" behind it has fundamentally changed.

This year, all 9 of the newly cultivated foundation-level smart factories in Dongping County have completed the digitalization and networking upgrades of their production lines. Every data point on the line can now be collected in real time, and every process can be dynamically monitored. Enterprise yield rates and production stability have reached a new level. Transitioning from "manual workshop rounds" to "data-driven systems," and from "experience-based scheduling" to "intelligent decision-making," smart manufacturing is injecting a steady stream of new momentum into Dongping County's industrial breakthroughs.