Abstract

The manufacturing industry currently faces both severe challenges and major opportunities against what is a slow recovery of the global economy, growing competitiveness in global manufacturing, increasing difficulty in maintaining traditional comparative advantages, and the brewing of a new industrial revolution. It is of strategic importance in the transformation and upgrade of the Chinese manufacturing industry that they develop new strengths and take the initiative in global competition by moving towards digitalization.

The use of digital applications in China’s manufacturing industry, particularly in traditional manufacturing, is in an early stage and on the rise. The potential of digitalization is tremendous. Enterprises that operate within the assembly line model will receive a boost to their development efforts if they are to introduce digital applications at the same time as they seek to further develop their automated operations.

In this article, we look at some of Siemens’s Industry 4.0 projects from around the world, as well as some of its manufacturing experiences in this area. Together with the idea of the digitalization strategy, we also examine the strategies adopted by certain developed countries in this area, analyze the current state of Chinese manufacturing, and recommend the use of life-cycle management and cloud platforms to enhance productivity and to lower production costs. The implementation of digitalization in manufacturing can help to strengthen Chinese manufacturing.