A seminar themed on smart manufacturing took place in Taicang, Jiangsu province, on Aug 29, marking the beginning of the 2nd Taicang Enterprises Development Forum.

The seminar was organized by Taicang talents affairs office, Taicang municipal commission of economy and information technology and the Talent Exchange Center of the State Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

More than 100 senior executives from local small- and medium-sized enterprises attended the event, keen to learn more about the new ideas, new technologies and supporting policies related to smart manufacturing that could help them transform and upgrade their businesses.

Zhao Min, deputy secretary-general of CPS (Cyber Physical System) Development Forum of MIIT and Li Qi, general manager of Beijing Acestep Automatic Control Equipment Co, were invited to give lectures about smart manufacturing.

Zhao answered questions such as what is smart manufacturing and how perform well in smart manufacturing. He pointed out that smart manufacturing systems are capable of removing uncertainty within systems and optimize the allocation of manufacturing resources.

He added that if an enterprise wants to use smart manufacturing systems, the enterprise needs to digitalize all the things that can be digitalized, connect all the things that can be linked online so as to make the data of the enterprise available at any time.

Zhao also said that smart manufacturing systems can be assessed from the following aspects: real-time monitoring, real-time analysis, autonomous decision-making, accurate execution and self-improvement.

Li analyzed the current situation of discrete manufacturing industries and these enterprises' concern about smart manufacturing, and he also proposed a series of solutions.

On the same day, the experts also visited the smart manufacturing workshop of a local technology company.