Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, south China - Recent (CCTV - No access Chinese mainland)
1. Sign of Suofeiya Home Collection Co. Ltd. on wall
2. Various of furniture on display in model room
3. Various of Suofeiya Home Collection Co. Ltd. employee talking with customer; screen showing furniture design
4. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Wang Bing, CEO, Suofeiya Home Collection Co. Ltd. (starting with shot 3/partially overlaid with shot 5):
"The financial report of the first half of this year shows gross profit margins and cost rates were controlled well. Our gross profit margin was up sharply year-on-year. This can be attributed to the application and implementation of our 'smart' information system and production lines."
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5. Furniture on display
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6. Various of Wang Bin, colleague looking at computer screen showing furniture design
7. Various of Suofeiya Home Collection Co. Ltd. employees working on computers; computer screen showing furniture design

FILE: Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, south China - Date Unknown (CCTV - No access Chinese mainland)
8. Robotic arms in operation

Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, south China - Recent (CCTV - No access Chinese mainland)
9. Various of Chen Lingmei, chairman of iFashion Cloud, discussing clothing design with colleague
10. Various of automatic fabric cutting machine in operation
11. Plaque of Shenzhen Intelligent Manufacturing Center on wall
12. Sign of 3D Body scanner
13. Screen showing AI-powered figure measuring system
14. Garment store interior
15. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Chen Lingmei, chairman, iFashion Cloud (starting with shot 14):
"We began making a profit from June and I feel relieved now. We will renovate here to adjust to intelligent systems."
16. Various of automatic fabric cutting machine in operation

Digital upgrades and the use of smart machinery have helped Chinese manufacturers to survive and even thrive during the coronavirus pandemic, by lowering their production costs and improving plant-floor productivity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created many obstacles for traditionally labor-intensive industries, but it has also prompted a digital transformation of several manufacturing industries to incorporate more smart technologies.

Among those that have benefited from the transition to intelligent manufacturing is a home design enterprise located in Guangzhou, the capital city of south China's Guangdong Province.

Thanks in part to the implementation of smart machinery in its production factory, Suofeiya Home Collection Co. Ltd. saw a 26.46 percent-increase in profit in the second quarter of 2020 from a year ago.

"The financial report of the first half of this year shows gross profit margins and cost rates were controlled well. Our gross profit margin was up sharply year-on-year. This can be attributed to the application and implementation of our 'smart' information system and production lines," said the company's CEO Wang Bing.

The furniture manufacturing industry is typically labor-intensive, with the quality of the products relying heavily on the workers' proficiency. With huge amounts of data to process daily, Suofeiya has realized that it should focus not only on product quality, but also on efficiency.

And it is also thanks to a digital transformation that the iFashion Cloud garment factory has continued making profits despite the gloomy COVID-19 economic outlook.

The company, based in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen, completed its digitalization upgrade last year with procedures to help with figure measuring and tailoring. In one process that uses AI technology with 34 infrared cameras, it takes just one minute to collect customers' body size data.

Chen Lingmei, chairman of iFashion Cloud, said her firm's labor costs have dropped 30 percent and that she is very satisfied with the results.

"We began making a profit from June and I feel relieved now. We will renovate here to adjust to intelligent systems," said Chen.

Experts say due to the pandemic, traditional manufacturing companies have paid more attention to the application of automated production lines to build smart factories.