Municipal castings have opened up overseas markets, with the product qualification rate increasing from 85% to 95%, and energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of output value falling by 8.6% in five years… Since the “14th Five-Year Plan”, Jize County has anchored on “accelerating digital development and promoting industrial digital transformation”, using the foundry industry as a breakthrough to promote the transformation of traditional industries from “high consumption and low efficiency” to “sophisticated intelligence”, and embarking on a unique “Jize Intelligent Manufacturing” development path.
The picture shows the idiom manhole cover in the exhibition hall of Jize County Hongguang Casting Co., Ltd. Photo by Qi Pengfei
From “manufacturing” to “intelligent manufacturing”, the innovative development path of Jize County Hongguang Casting Co., Ltd. is getting wider and wider. The company cleverly integrates idiom cultural elements such as “Hufu, riding and shooting” into product design, and launches idiom manhole covers that are both practical and artistic. It is worth noting that the smart manhole covers developed by the company realize real-time monitoring of manhole cover displacement, water level, harmful gases and other data by implanting sensing modules, upgrading traditional products into “smart eyes” for urban governance.
“We have successfully jumped out of the single track of traditional municipal manhole covers. By implanting dual genes of culture and technology, we have increased the added value of our products by more than 30% and opened up overseas markets.” Zhao Liqiang, the company's general manager, said that digital transformation has not only transformed the production line, but also reshaped product competitiveness.
Hongguang’s transformation is an example of Jize’s efforts to promote industrial digitalization. Since the “14th Five-Year Plan”, Jize County has used foundry and equipment manufacturing parks as carriers to build a transformation matrix of “policy guidance + technological support + enterprise entities”. By organizing foundry-related enterprises to go to advanced areas for benchmarking studies, it has actively connected with universities and technology service providers, and promoted more than 10 enterprises above designated size to embark on the road of intelligent transformation. Up to now, the county has cultivated 21 high-tech enterprises in the foundry industry and 25 provincial-level specialized and new enterprises, and its industrial competitiveness has been significantly enhanced.
In the process of promoting industrial transformation, Jize County has innovatively launched three major measures: promoting the construction of the “Smart Park System Application Development Zone Pilot” to realize real-time visualization of park operation data, greatly improving management efficiency and service response speed; implementing targeted assistance and implementing “digital simultaneous construction” for new enterprises “Design” to help them build a solid digital foundation from the source, carry out “face-to-face” precise assistance to old enterprises, promote them to quickly break through technical bottlenecks, and achieve quality and efficiency improvement; expand digital trade, actively guide more than 10 foundry companies to try live streaming and product promotion, and achieve a steady increase in transaction volume.
“From 'machine replacing people' to 'data replacing brains', we are promoting the revitalization of traditional industries.” Li Liqiang, deputy secretary of the Party Working Committee and executive deputy director of the Management Committee of Jize County Economic Development Zone, said that in the next step, we will continue to improve the “industry-university-research-application” coordination mechanism, and strive to achieve zero breakthroughs in specialized, special and new “little giant” enterprises, so that the equipment manufacturing industry will become a hard support for the high-quality development of the county economy.
Correspondent Wang Jiaqi