Give the spotlight to the trailblazers! Yancheng Artificial Intelligence Promotion Conference entrepreneurs and AI digital humans "take the stage" as the main characters

Reprinted from: Yangtze Evening News

On the morning of March 18, Yancheng City held a conference to promote the integration of artificial intelligence into new industrialization. At this high-level citywide meeting, 12 representatives from key enterprises for high-quality development in Yancheng by 2025 were seated in the second row on the podium. Over 100 other enterprise representatives were also invited to sit in the center of the venue, while government departments, state-owned enterprises, and banks sat on both sides of the hall.

Yangtze Evening News/Ziniu News reporter noted that this was a unique government work promotion meeting. Besides the opening and closing segments where Yancheng’s top leaders explained and outlined the next steps, most of the meeting was led by entrepreneurs taking the “main role.”

Entrepreneur Representatives Speak

Yancheng reserved the most central “C position” for entrepreneurs, showcasing their determination and confidence in development with the most practical data.

The meeting highlighted impressive achievements in industrial economic development over the past year: by 2025, Yancheng’s industrial economy will stabilize at over one trillion yuan, reaching 1.1 trillion yuan. Yancheng-based Yueda Textile and Faurecia were selected as global “Lighthouse Factories,” while Likai Precision and Weixin Electronics achieved national excellence-level smart factories. Additionally, Yancheng added 136 advanced smart factories, 50 “Little Giant” enterprises recognized at the national level, 9 of which are “Little Giants,” and 5 provincial-level green industrial parks…

“Deer Little Yancheng”

This conference also featured the debut of an AI digital human host. The 3D mech-style digital person “Salt Deer” unveiled the “List of Key Enterprises for High-Quality Development in Yancheng 2025 (100 companies),” which became the focus of attention.

How strong are these 100 companies? The four core data points revealed by “Salt Deer” on-site provided a shocking answer: they contribute a quarter of the city’s industrial output above designated size; a quarter of the city’s industrial enterprise taxes; a quarter of the R&D expenditure of above-scale enterprises; and one-third of the city’s total foreign trade imports and exports.

They are not just individual economic entities but also key nodes connecting Yancheng’s “8 nationally influential, 10 provincially prominent, and 15 city-potential characteristic industries.” Behind these “quarter” and “third” figures are hundreds of well-known companies rooted in Yancheng, mutually thriving with the city—vivid proof of mutual achievement.

At this conference, entrepreneurs taking the “main role” shared their experiences in leveraging artificial intelligence to upgrade industries, demonstrating the enormous power of “AI + manufacturing” through tangible cost reductions and efficiency improvements.

In January this year, Faurecia (Yancheng) Automotive Parts Systems Co., Ltd., which recently received the global “Lighthouse Factory” honor, showcased their exploration results. In the stamping workshop, facing the pain point of mold changeover relying heavily on experienced workers, Faurecia digitized and algorithmized experience data. Using genetic algorithms and AI, they developed a second-level mold adjustment solution, reducing average mold changeover times from 3.1 to 2, increasing efficiency by 35.48%, and adding about 1.9 million units annually. In laser welding, machine learning reconstructed the data labeling system, reducing system misjudgment rate by 98.69%, cutting capacity loss from 1.5% to nearly zero (0.02%), and reducing related costs by 79%.

Even more astonishingly, in production scheduling, facing an average daily output of 180,000 units and 4,742 product combinations, AI-driven integrated planning cut scheduling time from 900 minutes (15 hours) to just 5 minutes—a 99.44% reduction—and decreased inventory overflow by 90%.

Similarly, Yancheng Weixin Electronics Co., Ltd. achieved a historic breakthrough by being listed among the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s 2025 outstanding smart factories. Focusing on FPC (Flexible Printed Circuit Board) industry characteristics, Weixin Electronics abandoned simple “machine replacement” and built a “virtual factory” digital twin system based on “5G + AI.” Currently, the company has deployed 11 types of AI models tailored to FPC processes. Relying on AI quality inspection models, they tackled issues like virtual soldering and circuit etching defects, boosting inspection efficiency by 80%, with a strict zero-tolerance for missed detections. This system can reduce material waste (such as FPC substrates and solder paste) by over 5% annually and cut labor by 20%. Additionally, through digital twin simulation optimization, unplanned downtime in workshops was reduced by 35%.

These pioneers not only achieved digital and intelligent leaps themselves but also contribute to the industry ecosystem in Yancheng. Weixin Electronics, for example, is standardizing these 11 AI model solutions in a “mother factory” model, enabling deep sharing of quality standards and planning experience across upstream and downstream partners, helping upgrade the entire industrial chain.

A single flower does not make spring; a hundred flowers bloom, and spring fills the garden. To enable more enterprises to share in the benefits of digital intelligence, Yancheng is actively cultivating a first-class development ecosystem, building an “empowering ecosystem” characterized by “low-cost access, high-value support, and strong network connectivity.”

The conference also issued the “Yancheng City 2026 Action Plan for Accelerating AI-Driven New Industrialization” and a series of implementation plans, setting clear goals: implementing seven major special actions such as enterprise selection and benchmarking experience expansion, adding more than two national outstanding smart factories and over 100 provincial-level advanced smart factories within the year, and creating 50 “AI + manufacturing” benchmark scenarios.

Yangtze Evening News/Ziniu News Reporter Chen Ran

Proofread by Zhu Yaping