A section of 3 kilometers on the road, standing full of workers in charge of the garment factory, they hold a variety of clothing samples, holding signs waiting for the passing workers to choose to enter the factory, many people also shouted “monthly entry 10,000 no problem”… This is what happened recently in Haizhu District of Guangzhou, Guangdong province. In spite of this, the garment factory is still difficult to recruit workers, many people in charge sigh: “Now is the workers pick the boss”, “daily salary 700 yuan is still difficult to recruit”, “now there is no shortage of orders on the shortage of people”.

In recent years, the social phenomenon of “reverse tide of recruitment” has been repeatedly staged in the Pearl River Delta and other regions. The reasons for “recruitment difficulties” are complex, but they also reflect a big trend: China’s manufacturing industry, especially labor-intensive industries, is facing transformation and should develop towards a higher level.

How to push Chinese manufacturing to a higher level? Under the conditions of the epidemic, the “unmanned enterprises”, “black light factories” and “unmanned economy” have provided an important direction.

Press the automation and intelligent fast forward button, and more than 19,000 new enterprises related to the unmanned economy will be added in 2020

Entering the Youngor Group smart factory located in Haishu District, Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province, I saw an intelligent robot accurately move to the sewing workshop sewing worker Jiang Zhufeng, blinking “eyes” to remind “everyone is responsible for epidemic prevention, please wear a mask”. Not only that, when employees have illegal placement of items, improper operation and other behaviors, intelligent robots will quietly come and give warm tips. In the past, these were done by manual inspection.

At present, Youngor’s artificial intelligence applications have been deeply integrated with the production process. “Unstitch, turn over the next piece, the clothes are placed symmetrically, check the lapel eating potential, check the hanging eye position eating potential, and put away the clothes after the inspection”, through the large screen connected to the intelligent probe, you can see the intelligent algorithm to identify the employee’s operation actions, whether the lapel is normal and convex, whether there are defects, automatically determine the finished product quality inspection results, and statistical standard working hours.

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“Taking the fabric monitoring link as an example, previously this aspect was implemented manually, with large dependence on people and uneven control. Now artificial intelligence can automatically determine the result of finished product inspection, saving labor costs and improving production efficiency.” Gu Yuejun, information director of Youngor clothing manufacturing, told reporters that with the help of 5G+ industrial Internet, Youngor’s production will achieve visualization, transparency, predictability, and adaptive, production efficiency will be increased by more than 25%, and annual profit is expected to increase by 30 million yuan.

All this would have been unimaginable at the beginning of 2020. The epidemic has brought an unprecedented “super class” assessment to many enterprises, including Youngor: employees cannot be in place on time, raw material supply is hindered, and offline sales channels are basically closed… “Offline revenue was originally 15 million to 20 million yuan a day, but only 200,000 yuan or even less during the worst of the epidemic.” “Mr. Gu said.

“In the face of the impact of the epidemic, the construction of smart factories has given Youngor the ability to quickly respond to crises, to maximize flexible and efficient production, and to press the fast-forward key of Youngor’s automation and intelligent construction.” Gu Yuejun said that Youngor turned the crisis into an opportunity, deepened the application of artificial intelligence, and dug more alternative work scenarios on the basis of the existing ones, so that AI could provide faster, smarter and more stable solutions, reduce the reliance on manual labor, and expand online sales channels to promote performance gradually from the serious impact of the epidemic.

Under the impact of the epidemic, artificial intelligence, 5G, and big data technologies are accelerating the update and iteration, and the “unmanned economy” characterized by automation and intelligence, such as unmanned restaurants, unmanned supermarkets, unmanned distribution, and unmanned factories, is becoming more and more closely related to our lives. Data show that in the past decade, the number of new enterprises related to the unmanned economy in China has been increasing year by year, there are more than 73,000 unmanned economy-related enterprises in China, and more than 19,000 new related enterprises in 2020, which is the most incremental year.

“The ‘unmanned economy’ has changed the traditional economy’s high dependence on manpower. While reducing labor costs, information exchange costs and transaction costs, it also provides positive help for epidemic prevention and control, and profoundly changes our way of life.” Said Sun Zhongwei, a professor at the School of Politics and Public Administration of South China Normal University.