(Photo/VCG)

"The lack of capital and difficulty in data interaction are two hurdles when it comes to digital management for small and medium enterprises in the past," said Tong Souyue from Hongyan, a car parts manufacturer, "but they have been resolved thanks to smart cloud industrial Internet platform. It not only reduces costs for SMEs, but can also boost their productivity by more than 20%."

Designed by NBMADE particularly for SMEs, the smart cloud Internet platform is an industrial data collection and production management system. Thanks to the efforts and expertise of academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering Tan Jianrong and his team, the platform alleviates the difficulty in data interaction between different devices. In addition, the platform breaks the bottleneck in capital for SMEs through innovation of cooperation models, paving the way for their digitization. In Haishu District alone, the digital transformation of more than 30 SMEs have been well in progress so far. By the end of this year, 500 SMEs are expected to benefit from the platform.

Quality, productivity and management improvement on the back of digitization is of critical importance for the competitiveness of businesses in Ningbo. However, such transformation comes at a cost that would deter many SMEs. The smart cloud Internet platform is different from its peers in that it requires low costs and is easy to operate and quick to deliver visible results, according to Xiao Yong from NBMADE.

The digital transformation of SMEs is just part of a larger package of services this platform can provide for SMEs. In the future, the platform can design customized apps for more SMEs in accordance with their demands.

Moving forward, the platform will launch a series of products to address the acute bottlenecks and pressing difficulties that will come up in the development of SMEs. This way, the manufacturing sector in Ningbo can move faster towards smart manufacturing.

(Executive Editor: Wenxi Yang)