Zhu Yanfeng, president of Dongfeng Motor Co, speaks at the conference on Nov 20. [Photo provided to en.whkfq.gov.cn]
Zhu Yanfeng, president of China's giant automaker Dongfeng Motor Co, shared his insights on how to accelerate the automobile industry's digitalization at the 2022 China 5G + Industrial Internet Conference on Nov 20 in Wuhan.
In Zhu's speech, automobiles are considered carriers of the newest technologies. People nowadays care more about electric vehicle power assembly systems, smart cockpits and autonomous driving systems than they do about conventional assembly and chassis systems.
Zhu highlighted that computing power has breathed new life into cars. He said that digitalization has become an important accelerator for the high-quality development of the auto industry.
Dongfeng has clarified its digitalization development scheme for their 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), and issued its digitalization 2.0 strategy. This strategy urges digital methods and approaches to be applied in all the R&D, production, procurement, sales, service and management procedures.
The use of cloud space to share car designs was hailed by Zhu since it effectively shortens the R&D time by one third for enterprises.
Zhu also prioritized the demand from customers, saying that the customers' demands define application scenarios, which define products. The product types then determine production procedures, production teams and resource allocation. It is the customers and the market that finally tests the effectiveness of digitalization.
The digitalization process, in Zhu's opinion, is not simply an information system upgrade, but a long-term systematic process that involves the transformations in the chains of industries, values, management and services.
Dongfeng's VOYAH FREE, VOYAH Dreamer, Dongfeng Sharing-VAN1.0 and Sharing-Bus Chunsun were also displayed at the conference.
Production models of VOYAH FREE, VOYAH Dreamer are displayed at the 2022 China 5G + Industrial Internet Conference on Nov 20. [Photo provided to en.whkfq.gov.cn]
