Shanghai-based Baosteel, or Baoshan Iron and Steel Co Ltd, was included on the list of global "lighthouse" manufacturers released by the World Economic Forum for the first time in January 2020.

Since the outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia, or the disease named by WHO as COVID-19, Baosteel has not stopped running for a minute. The intelligent manufacturing system covering the whole factory has realized effective balance between epidemic prevention and control and stable, high yields in this special period.

"If there is a technical problem on the production line, I can solve it at home," said Fu Shunming, an engineer at Baosteel. "There is intelligent remote control software inside my mobile phone."

According to Fu, before the intelligent reconstruction, there were many workers on the cold rolling production line. Now, the 12 robots are responsible for the most dangerous, dirty and difficult jobs in that workshop, including feeding, dredging, discharging and packaging. Workers and engineers in the same workshop can achieve production without meeting each other, keeping epidemic prevention and control in place.

The cold rolling workshop is just one of the representatives of the "lighthouse" manufacturer's intelligent manufacturing achievements. Five smart manufacturing projects at Baosteel were selected as best practices by the World Economic Forum's "lighthouse" manufacturers.

At present, intelligent manufacturing has been widely adopted in the whole process of Baosteel's production and manufacturing.

Under the influence of the epidemic, many of the enterprises in Shanghai that were less affected and took the lead in resuming operations have advanced technology and high degrees of automation.

In addition to Baosteel, some integrated circuit and artificial intelligence enterprises also continue to operate under the premise of adequate prevention and control.

"The epidemic has had a relatively small impact on high-tech companies in manufacturing," said Zheng Shilin, associate researcher at the National School of Development, Peking University.

Statistics show that enterprises with high and new technologies are better able to resist risks. Data from the Shanghai Bureau of Statistics show that with a background of a complicated international environment and great downward pressure on the domestic economy, the total output value of strategic emerging industries in Shanghai still grew by 3.3 percent in 2019 over the previous year, which is better than the average level of the city.