On January 9, Shanghai unveiled its Three-Year Action Plan for Bolstering the Transformation and Upgrading of Advanced Manufacturing in the City (2026 - 2028). This plan puts forward the launch of an 'AI + Manufacturing' empowerment campaign. It aims to nurture a cadre of cutting-edge deployment engineers and motivates enterprises to harness advanced technologies, such as large - scale artificial intelligence models, to construct industry - specific models and industrial intelligent agents. By doing so, it seeks to boost their digital and intelligent prowess.

In addition, the plan backs enterprises in adopting independent basic software and industrial software in crucial areas like R&D design, physical simulation, and production control. The plan explicitly outlines that by 2027, large enterprises will be prompted to take the lead in fully implementing digital and intelligent technologies. A new phase of the Smart Factory Leadership Program will be rolled out, with the goal of achieving complete smart factory coverage among large enterprises by 2028. It also sets targets to increase robot density to 600 units per 10,000 people and raise the digitalization level of smart manufacturing equipment to over 70%.