Guangzhou Tongwei Smart Technology Co., Ltd. (Tongwei Smart) makes industrial-grade AIoT smart operations products and data services. What it is concerned with is how equipment, environment, and energy-use sites are connected and brought into a process that can be managed. Shanghai CIIF 2026 was held from 12 to 16 October, with the theme “Intelligent Economy, Intelligent Manufacturing Without Boundaries.” According to figures published by the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization on 14 October, the exhibition area was 310,000 square metres, with more than 3,200 exhibitors from 24 countries and regions, and 10 theme exhibitions. These figures describe the coverage of the fair. They do not mean that a given technology is already in general use inside factories.
First separate what the fair displayed from the product judgment
Industrial AI has moved from concept display toward scenario verification. At the fair, Siemens opened six types of embodied-intelligence factory scenarios, covering sorting and feeding, handling, depalletizing and palletizing, process operation, and inspection, and said it will carry out testing and data accumulation in real production environments. This shows that scenarios, tasks, and engineering verification are becoming part of how industrial AI is presented. It does not mean that every factory already has the same conditions. The takeaway for Tongwei Smart is this: a related capability starts from one problem that can be described and verified, for example whether an exception can be found in time, whether an alarm has reached the responsible person, and whether the handling result can return to the platform. Prediction and automatic execution have to be built on specific data and a safety boundary.
AI has also entered the engineering development process. Beckhoff’s fair feature introduced TwinCAT CoAgent, which connects a large language model into the TwinCAT 3 engineering environment for PLC code generation, optimisation, and comments. This is an engineering tool the vendor displayed. It shows that AI does not appear only on the production floor. It may also enter the repetitive work of engineers. What is more worth Tongwei Smart watching over time is whether configuration, equipment access, rule maintenance, and operations reports can reduce repetitive work, rather than placing a chat entry on its own so that there is “AI”.
Equipment and systems need to describe each other more clearly. During the fair, Siemens jointly released the national standard GB/T 47859—2026, Rules for Reconfigurable Modelling of Production Systems in Smart Factories, which covers how different equipment and systems express behaviour and interact. Release of a standard is a directional signal. It cannot be used to say that Tongwei’s existing products already conform to that standard. Equipment networking should therefore not stop at “supports a given protocol.” Model, points, units, the meaning of states, exception rules, and interface responsibility all have to be explainable. Improving equipment templates and project documents is so that the access scope and the acceptance basis are clearer.
The edge side and the platform side need a division of work. Siemens’ new products at this fair cover edge AI, and Beckhoff also showed a combination from industrial PCs and I/O through to control software. It can be observed that industrial systems are looking at field response and engineering coordination at the same time. Tongwei Smart’s suggestion is this: the gateway takes reliable access, the local judgment that is needed, and data handling during a network outage as implemented by configuration; the AIoT operations platform takes unified management across equipment and across sites. Whether caching, local interlock, and multi-centre upload are supported is confirmed against the specific product configuration.
Energy systems and digital infrastructure are more closely related. Delta exhibited an energy scheme centred on a solid-state transformer, including a DC microgrid and schemes aimed at scenarios such as AI data centres. This is the exhibitor’s technical route. It shows that the links among energy management, power-supply infrastructure, and digital operations are increasing. For Tongwei Smart, the practical entry point is to connect and sort out energy-use data such as electricity, water, gas, and cooling and heating, and to do classified statistics, peak, flat, and valley analysis, and prompts for operating exceptions. Actual dispatch, production control, and protection remain the responsibility of the corresponding systems.
Local adaptation and the cooperation network matter as well. Siemens said it released more than 20 new products at this fair, 13 of them innovative products developed in China, and signed cooperation agreements with more than 40 Chinese enterprises. This is information disclosed by that enterprise. It is not a count of the whole fair. It shows that speed of adaptation, partner collaboration, and repeatable delivery are all part of competitiveness. Around its own gateways, expansion modules, and platform interfaces, Tongwei Smart can make the more standard parts into selectable product supply, and the parts closer to the field into solution supply with a clear boundary.
Product planning has to return to field problems that can be accepted
Taken together, the six signals allow a more practical order: first make equipment access, the point model, data quality, and the alarm process solid; then use a single-site pilot to verify assisted diagnosis, energy-efficiency analysis, and multi-site operations; expand the scope of automation only when the data, the permissions, and the safety conditions are all clear.
This matches Tongwei Smart’s positioning of one device-edge-cloud foundation and two business lines. Equipment makers and integration partners can start from the gateway, expansion modules, and platform interfaces. Customers with a clear operations scenario start from a requirements diagnosis and a single-site pilot. Tongwei Smart does not replace the customer’s core controller, field safety system, or specialised energy dispatch system.
If you are planning equipment networking or an operations upgrade, you can first organise the equipment list, the protocol point table, the number of sites, and the result you want to verify, and then judge whether to start from product selection or a single-site assessment.
Common questions
- What does Shanghai CIIF 2026 suggest for industrial IoT products?
- Plan equipment access, the meaning of the data, edge processing, the alarm process, and the acceptance method together, so that networked data enters actual operations. Product choice still has to return to the specific site.
- Does putting industrial AI to work have to start with a large model?
- Not necessarily. First confirm that the field data is reliable, that exceptions are clearly defined, and that the handling process can be traced, and then verify whether assisted analysis is useful. Critical control remains the responsibility of deterministic rules and a specialised control system.
- Where can a product upgrade start?
- First choose one class of equipment or one site, check the equipment list, the protocol point table, and the acceptance target, and then verify the combination of gateway, platform, and alarm process.