Wei Qiao's Chief Information Officer Ma Fahong: AI Empowerment Is a Marathon, Not a "100-Meter Dash"

On August 25, at the DingTalk 10th Anniversary and AI ZhuanDing 1.0 New Product Launch Event, Ma Fahong, Director of the Information Center at Shandong Weiqiao Pioneering Group, delivered a keynote speech titled "From Manufacturing to Intelligent Manufacturing: AI Innovation in Traditional Industries for 100,000 Employees."

As Shandong's largest private enterprise—a manufacturing giant with more than 100,000 employees—Weiqiao Group has seen frontline workers independently develop over 800 DingTalk AI applications in just two months, sparking an unprecedented "AI for All" movement.

From Tool to Gateway: DingTalk Becomes the Cornerstone of Intelligent Transformation

Weiqiao first partnered with DingTalk in 2023, initially using it for attendance tracking, OA approvals, and other scenarios. As the team delved deeper into DingTalk's document, meeting, and AI assistant features, their confidence in DingTalk as a "gateway to future intelligent applications" grew steadily. In early 2025, Weiqiao decided to fully embrace AI, establishing DingTalk as a unified digital gateway for all employees.

Three Major Infrastructure Projects Rapidly Implemented to Solidify the Intelligent Foundation

Following the strategic upgrade, Weiqiao swiftly completed three key infrastructure projects: within three weeks, all 100,000 employee accounts were migrated to the enterprise version; in response to the stringent data security requirements of large manufacturing enterprises, DingTalk's private storage deployment was completed; and the DingTalk AI application platform was introduced and locally deployed, paving the way for future innovation.

Organizational Transformation: IT Role Evolution and the Birth of "Digital Intelligence Specialists"

With the foundational infrastructure in place, the real journey of building an intelligent organization had only just begun. Ma Fahong highlighted the core pain points and breakthrough strategies in digital transformation—namely, the need for a fundamental shift in the role of the IT department. "We are no longer 'technical implementers' who handle everything ourselves," she said. "Instead, we must become 'digital tool operators' and 'coaches for everyone.'" She emphasized that the biggest obstacle is the "language gap" between the technology and business teams.

To address this, Weiqiao innovatively established the position of "Digital Intelligence Specialist" within its production and business departments. "They are carefully selected seed players," Ma Fahong explained. "They have strong business expertise, possess IT thinking, and are highly motivated to learn." These Digital Intelligence Specialists quickly became "super connectors" across departments, laying the organizational groundwork for the subsequent explosion of AI applications.

Pursue Quantity First, Then Quality: Launching the "AI for All" Movement

Facing this "marathon" of AI empowerment, Weiqiao adopted a bold action plan: "Pursue quantity first, then quality." "We encourage all 100,000 employees to get involved—everyone should be both a developer and a user of AI," Ma Fahong explained. "Even if an application only brings a small efficiency gain, it is still meaningful."

This strategy of lowering the barrier to entry and encouraging trial and error aims to rapidly collect a large volume of real-world business scenarios. Within three months, employees spontaneously created more than 800 AI assistants. At the event, Ma Fahong shared three exemplary cases that stood out from the vast pool of applications.

Three Benchmark Applications Created by Frontline Employees

Electrolysis worker Master Cui independently developed an AI assistant that retrieves quick-sample testing data for electrolytic cells. Workers no longer need to go to the office to check a computer—they can instantly access critical production data right in the workshop.

Master Ma from the Equipment Department integrated all company safety regulations and standards into a knowledge base. By leveraging DingTalk AI Tables' AI image recognition capabilities, he enabled automatic identification of safety hazards via photos, automatic record generation, automated task assignment, and closed-loop tracking. This dramatically improved inspection efficiency and hazard resolution rates, and the data also feeds back into the knowledge base, creating a positive feedback loop.

The "Information Center AI Assistant" built by the Information Center has become a super "firefighter." Previously, the Information Center's team of fewer than 60 people handled the optimization and maintenance of nearly 400 business systems. Today, this AI assistant can take orders online in real time and automatically resolve 50% of IT issues, freeing up technical staff to focus on complex problems. The issue-resolution process is fully automated and traceable, boosting team efficiency by 70% and significantly improving employee satisfaction.

From Quantitative Change to Qualitative Leap: Moving Toward Group-Level "Star Applications"