The first time to organize this event, Shanghai Electric took the opportunity for the company's internal and external teams to promote industrial innovation and accelerate digital transformation. The theme of the competition aimed to push applicants to develop practical applications for use in industrial settings, and called for a focus on connecting four concepts - smart cities, smart energy, smart manufacturing and smart transportation - four areas that outline the future direction of Shanghai Electric.
Of the 140 entries from domestic and international teams, the top three prizes were awarded to 16 projects, ten of which were from Shanghai Electric and six from other companies. The Company's Central Research Institute signed project incubation agreements with four of the award-winning external teams. Shanghai Electric Digital Technology (SEDT) and other six companies reached an ecosystem cooperation agreement for SEunicloud, Shanghai Electric's industrial internet platform.
About the competition and the unveiling of the winners, Shanghai Electric President, Huang Ou said, "On the path of improving our skills in 3D design and industrial applications, the extraordinary achievements of those participants we see in this year's contest are the small steps in accelerating the digital transformation of Shanghai Electric, but those joint efforts have amounted to a huge step forward for the entire company."
"From digitizing product models to business models, this competition has laid the foundation for Shanghai Electric to build a new ecosystem for SEunicloud, as well as gathered a specialized team to speed up the digital transformation of our company," he added.
Also unveiled at the awards ceremony, the upgraded SEunicloud Industrial Internet Platform 2.0 revealed improvements in terms of the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Business Intelligence (BI), and Creative Intelligence (CI). With these upgrades, the platform will further accelerate Shanghai Electric's digital transformation and marks yet another substantial step forward in the construction of Shanghai Electric's Industrial Internet.
The 2.0 release features a new AI big data module capable of providing data value displays and business analysis for a multitude of industrial scenarios. The upgraded Business Intelligence module utilizes fast data processing and visualization tools to produce intuitive displays and enable intelligent analysis across huge datasets. In addition, through an inbuilt visual development integrated system, the platform can be used as an InaaS (Innovation-as-a-Service) platform.
Shanghai Electric's focus on digitization and development is reflected in a consistently high R&D investment rate of over 3.4%. This number is intended to be higher for development in new industries, predicted at an increase of 6% from 2019, and investment in pre-research and development which is expected to see an increase of 11%.