From the steam age to the electric age, and from the information age to the intelligent age, human society has experienced four waves of industrial revolution since the 18th century. Each industrial revolution has been accompanied by landmark technological breakthroughs, with artificial intelligence (AI) technology being the undisputed core driving force of the intelligent age. Today, as AI deeply integrates with various industries, it is becoming a key variable driving the high-quality development of manufacturing, and manufacturing has become the main battlefield for AI application deployment. In this process, for many manufacturing enterprises, how to use AI applications to reconstruct the entire business lifecycle still presents a formidable digital-intelligent divide—this involves not only technological access but also profound systemic transformation.
To help more manufacturing enterprises bridge this digital-intelligent divide, Huawei, based on the philosophy of “Rooted in Manufacturing, Understands Manufacturing Better, Serves Manufacturing,” continuously promotes the digital-intelligent transformation of the manufacturing sector. To date, Huawei has helped numerous enterprises in various sub-sectors such as automotive, electronics, and new energy achieve digital-intelligent transformation. At the recently held 2025 World Intelligent Industry Expo, Huawei not only laid out a complete path for AI-enabled intelligent upgrading in manufacturing—from top-level methodology to underlying technical support, and from scenario-based solutions to open and collaborative ecosystem building—but also painted a promising blueprint for digital-intelligent transformation for more manufacturers through a series of replicable “lighthouse” model examples like Changan Automobile, Seres, and Qiteng Robots.
Moving Towards Full Process and Full Elements: “AI+ Manufacturing” Enters a New Stage
With the continuous acceleration of AI innovation, the relationship between AI and various industries is quietly changing. Recently, the “2025 China Enterprise Digital Transformation Index” released by Accenture showed that Chinese companies are beginning to scale AI applications in broader and deeper dimensions, gradually enhancing core enterprise technical capabilities like cloud and security, and continuously driving business reshaping. This trend is particularly evident in China’s manufacturing industry. Recently, the State Council issued the “Opinions on Deeply Implementing the ‘AI+’ Action,” which explicitly called for promoting intelligent linkage of all industrial elements and accelerating the application of AI across all stages: design, pilot testing, production, service, and operation. It emphasized deepening the integrated application of AI and the Industrial Internet to enhance the intelligent perception, decision-making, and execution capabilities of industrial systems.
Driven by both technology and policy, the integration of AI and manufacturing is moving from innovative businesses to core businesses, from single links to full processes, and from single elements to all elements. For example, in the design phase, AI is being used in areas like modeling, simulation, and process design; in production and manufacturing, for quality inspection and robot control; and in management, for warehouse logistics and supply chain management.
The global “Lighthouse Factories” selected by the World Economic Forum, known as “the world’s most advanced factories,” have achieved large-scale application of digital technologies like AI, big data, and IoT, achieving breakthrough improvements in production efficiency, resource utilization, and sustainable development capabilities. By the beginning of this year, the total number of global “Lighthouse Factories” had reached 189, with Chinese “Lighthouse Factories” accounting for over 42%, ranking first. Now, the pioneering efforts of these “Lighthouse Factories” have made more and more manufacturing enterprises realize the importance and urgency of promoting the deep integration of AI and business. Consequently, manufacturing enterprises are placing higher demands on digital-intelligent transformation service providers: they must understand both the business characteristics of the manufacturing industry and the challenges and pain points of integrating new technologies like AI with manufacturing, and be able to provide end-to-end services.
In the face of these new customer demands, Huawei is undoubtedly a suitable choice for manufacturing digital-intelligent transformation. As Yang Ping, General Manager of Huawei China’s Government and Enterprise Intelligent Manufacturing System Department, stated, the intelligentization of all elements in manufacturing enterprises has become a definite trend. Rooted in manufacturing, understanding manufacturing better, and serving manufacturing, Huawei, as a manufacturing enterprise with strong R&D capabilities, based on its own practices and leading ICT technology, and together with partners, insists on being customer-centric, continuously promoting the deepening and solidification of digital-intelligent transformation for manufacturing enterprises.
From Tech Innovation to Scenarios: Driving Deeper AI-Manufacturing Integration
From initiating digital transformation in 2014 to promoting intelligent upgrading in 2018, Huawei has gradually applied its innovations in new technologies like big data and AI deeply into all links of R&D, production, supply, sales, and service, aiming to reconstruct operational models and enhance efficiency. In this process, Huawei’s understanding of manufacturing business processes has deepened, along with a more profound awareness of the challenges at various development stages. By “jumping with its own parachute first” (using its own solutions internally), Huawei has gradually formed a complete methodology for enterprise digital-intelligent transformation and data governance. On this basis, Huawei is also considering how to replicate its experience to more manufacturing enterprises and help them achieve deep integration of AI and manufacturing.
To this end, Huawei is accelerating AI deployment with “strategic guidance, computing power support, and systematic collaboration” at its core. Through “horizontal systematic construction,” it is building upon solid processes, IT, and data, progressing step by step steadily towards comprehensive intelligentization. Through “vertical scenario-based breakthroughs,” it uses scenarios as traction, promotes construction through use, cultivates talent, and achieves major victories through accumulated small wins. Especially at the infrastructure level, Feng Rui, Head of Huawei China’s Government and Enterprise Intelligent Manufacturing Solution Department, emphasized that Huawei will seize the AI opportunity to provide end-to-end full-stack new infrastructure around the data lifecycle (“collect, transmit, store, compute, manage, use”) encompassing “Intelligent Connectivity, Intelligent Storage, Intelligent Computing Power, and Intelligent Platform.” Simultaneously, through its own practices + ICT technology, and together with partners, it will deeply cultivate business scenarios, creating 7 major scenarios and 20 solutions to assist enterprise digital-intelligent transformation and continuously create value for customers.
Meanwhile, Huawei’s solutions already cover 7 major scenarios: talent cultivation, consulting, R&D, production, supply, sales, and operations, covering the entire manufacturing process. For example, the hardware toolchain solution can help enterprises achieve cross-departmental data homogeneity, common source, and global sharing, significantly improving R&D efficiency. The smart factory solution can help enterprises integrate engineering data flow, business information flow, and production process flow, aiding industrial production in improving quality, reducing costs, and increasing efficiency.
Lighting Up “Lighthouses”: Letting Digital-Intelligent Light Illuminate the Future Path of Manufacturing
According to the latest news, to help more manufacturing enterprises accelerate digital-intelligent transformation, Huawei, in the process of promoting the deep integration of AI and manufacturing, is working with partners to create more industry-specific digital-intelligent transformation model points. Huawei hopes that by lighting up these “lighthouses,” it can provide practical references for more sub-sector clients, illuminating entire industries and the future path of manufacturing. Seres, working with Huawei, based on the benchmark of “three major concepts, four major platforms, five major capabilities,” and driven by AI, relies on the smart campus solution to fully utilize “platform + connectivity” to aggregate massive data assets, accelerate resource sharing, and build a safe, efficient, and green super factory smart campus. This achieves efficient production, smart office, lean operations, boosts intelligent production, improves efficiency, reduces energy consumption, and promotes sustainable development.
The Avatar digital-intelligent factory, built by Changan Automobile in collaboration with Huawei and other partners, widely applies over 40 advanced technologies including 5G, AI, and digital twin. It already possesses three major characteristics: “highly intelligent, extremely efficient, top quality,” becoming the world’s first full-domain 5G digital-intelligent AI flexible super factory. It can support flexible customized production for three vehicle models with over ten thousand configurations, achieving a comprehensive manufacturing efficiency increase of 20%, cost reduction of 20%, and energy consumption reduction of 19%.
Furthermore, Huawei is continuously deepening cooperation with partners in specific fields to jointly serve the digital-intelligent transformation of more industries and create more “lighthouse” models. Qiteng Robot is a leading enterprise in the field of special robots. The industrial chemical multi-modal large model developed by the company has successfully passed the Ascend AI native technical certification based on the Ascend AI basic software and hardware platform and the MindSpore framework. It can perform multi-modal (image, text, speech) target detection, recognition, and segmentation tasks in industrial scenarios, meeting high standards in performance, stability, and independent innovation. Today, robot products equipped with this industrial chemical multi-modal large model are widely used in industries such as electric power and petrochemicals, becoming important supports for the digital-intelligent transformation of these industries.
However, for Huawei, creating “lighthouse” models is only the first step towards deep industry cultivation. On this basis, Huawei is committed to replicating these successful experiences across more sub-sectors, achieving a “Digital-Intelligent World at Your Fingertips,” and allowing more enterprises to share the dividends of digital-intelligent transformation. As Yu Saihua, Huawei China Government and Enterprise CMO, said, the goal of “Digital-Intelligent World at Your Fingertips” is to help enterprises of different development stages and sizes easily achieve digital-intelligent transformation. By choosing the “Partner + Huawei” system, enterprises can leverage Huawei’s innovative root technologies, scenario-deep solutions, easy-to-use and market-ready products, attentive service teams, and Huawei’s rich industry experience to “reach” the digital-intelligent world effortlessly.
Standing at the historical node of the fourth industrial revolution, “AI + Manufacturing” capability has not only become a key indicator of core enterprise competitiveness but also a new engine driving industrial leaps. With full-stack technological innovation as its foundation and an open ecosystem as its bond, Huawei has built a complete closed loop for the manufacturing industry, from strategic planning to scenario implementation. Thus, Huawei will help more manufacturing enterprises cross the digital-intelligent divide and, together with industry partners and customers, accelerate the journey towards an intelligent, precise, and efficient future of manufacturing.
