A press announcement from the The Industry and Information Technology Department of Hunan Province, China, has highlighted how the region’s capital city, Changsha, is currently using 5G to improve its industrial supply chain following the coronavirus pandemic.
The department says that it is currently in the process of investing ¥6.74bn (around $944m) for the development of 5G infrastructure, and says it will introduce 20,000 5G base stations in the city by the end of 2020.
One company taking advantage of the investment will be Sany Heavy Industry Co., a Chinese multinational heavy equipment manufacturing company headquartered in Changsha, which is the 3rd-largest heavy equipment manufacturer in the world.
China's manufacturing strategy
Since 2018, when manufacturing became one of China’s critical national strategies, Sany has been exploring the applications of AI in its products, production and services. It has developed several unmanned heavy machinery, including excavators and cranes, all of which can be remotely controlled with precision.
"5G-powered “intelligent manufacturing robots” work nonstop. They are working in almost all of the procedures."
Hunan Province report.
“Sany enjoys a reputation of being an ‘intelligent factory’, as it owns the national intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory,” said the government report. “In this factory 5G-powered “intelligent manufacturing robots” work nonstop. They are working in almost all of the procedures, from goods collecting, transferring, parts assembling, to painting, drying, detecting and warehousing.”
According to The Industry and Information Technology Department of Hunan Province, Sany and its partners are now working together to develop innovative 5G intelligent manufacturing applications, to be used in issue detection, equipment maintenance and key station monitoring.
According to government figures, in the first half of this year, 63 major projects with an investment of more than 200 million yuan were introduced into 22 industry chains in Changsha, including two 10 billion yuan projects, and four 5-10 billion yuan schemes, with a total planned investment of 103.2 billion yuan (around $14.4bn).
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