The silence of a midnight break was broken – users in Europe were buying a “Made in China†washing machine and placing orders on their mobile phones. At almost the same time, this order information was pushed to all links involved in the production chain of washing machine raw material suppliers, assembly manufacturing departments, logistics and transportation departments. This is not the case in science fiction movies or novels, but the real scene of the “black light workshop†in Haier, a Chinese home appliance company.
Just recently, the highly anticipated "Made in China 2025" plan was officially announced, and it proposed three decades, three steps, and ranked among the world's manufacturing powers. According to Miao Wei, Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the "Industry 4.0" plan and the "Made in China 2025" proposed by the German government were generally in a period of time. Specific to the home appliance industry, enterprises from industrial 2.0 to industrial 3.0, how to make up this lesson? Is it possible to move from industrial 2.0 to industry 4.0?
[Industry Aspect] Selecting Robots Together
According to Euromonitor's forecast, in the next four years, the global home appliance industry's output value will increase from the current 224 billion US dollars to 257 billion US dollars in 2019. And the engine of growth is in Asia, and Chinese home appliance manufacturers will become leaders in this transformation.
From the perspective of sales performance, Chinese household appliances companies are already the world's largest producers. Midea Group's sales revenue in 2014 exceeded 20 billion euros, double the number in 2009 and its profit reached 1.5 billion euros. In 2014, Gree Electric had a sales income of 20 billion euros and a net profit of 2 billion euros. Together with Qingdao Haier, the sales of China's three major home appliances companies totaled 52 billion euros.
However, the question is, how do Chinese home appliance companies meet growing sales? Robots become their common choice. “2015 is the 'watershed' of automated production.†Wu Shoubao, vice president of manufacturing for the US Household Air Conditioning Division, told the Southern Reporter that according to the plan, the investment in automation for the US in 2015 was as high as 800 million to 1 billion yuan, and 2012-2014. In the first three years, a total of about 1 billion yuan was invested.
These white flower banknotes are mainly burned on the purchase equipment. Take air-conditioning manufacturing as an example. "So far, Midea's home air conditioners have used 320 robots with six axes. The other four-axis or special planes will add more than 200 units this year. This is a calculation. This simple robot replacement costs 4800. Wanshoubao said to Nandu reporter that six-axis robots and four-axis robots belong to one type of robotic arm. The price of six-axis robots is generally around 100,000 yuan, and the price of four-axis robots is around 80,000 yuan. .
In addition to the purchase of robotic arms and special planes, Midea has also built three intelligent assembly lines in Shunde, Nansha and Wuhu. According to the industry, the purchase price of general intelligent assembly line equipment is much higher than that of the robot arm, usually more than one million. It is understood that Qingdao Haier is building a connected factory with great fanfare, and will invest huge sums in the future to renovate all existing factories. Hisense imported 13 robotic arms from Japan, each of which will cost more than 400,000 yuan. Nearly 100 AGV cars introduced by Hisense are produced in China, with more than 100,000 each.
[Focus on the issue] Has the robot robbed the workers of the rice bowl?
Traditional home appliance manufacturing requires a series of high-strength and high-risk types of work, such as handling heavy objects, stamping operations, and air-conditioning panel dusting, from raw materials to finished products. Through automated upgrades, robots can replace the high-intensity work of a worker carrying two or three thousand air-conditioning compressors a day.
Not long ago, Nandu reporter saw at the Hisense air-conditioner production base that the finished air-conditioning mainframes on six transportation lines were equipped with a robotic arm to remove the air-conditioning products and put them on the shelves. However, people are still indispensable. For example, the AGV automatic transport vehicle used by Hisense for transporting materials still needs to be wirelessly controlled by workers.
“For most of the Pearl River Delta manufacturing enterprises that are developing and expanding, in the case of unsatisfactory manpower, the workers originally used on the production line can be transferred to the intelligent industrial system assembly line. In addition, the automation is gradually transformed. After that, not only the skills of existing employees need to be upgraded, but also the qualifications of workers must be above junior colleges to adapt to future automation and even intelligent production.†The head of human resources of a home appliance company in the Pearl River Delta is like this to Nandu reporters. Say.
"In 2011, Midea's air conditioners were about 50 billion yuan in revenue, and the number of workers was over 50,000. In 2014, the total revenue was nearly 70 billion, and the number of workers was 26,000. In 2018, the United States will have to receive 100 billion, the number of workers. The goal of down to 20,000 people." Wu Shoubao further exemplified, it is understood that Gree Electric's Zhuhai factory also used dozens of robots, the staff from the initial 300 to more than 100 people, but the production efficiency has improved 20%.
[Advanced Path] "Industry 4.0" Go left and go to the right
This is a trend. On the way to “Industry 4.0â€, each company has its own exploration about the path of “achieving smart manufacturingâ€. Li Yang, general manager of Qingdao Haier Locomotive Washing Machine, gave an analysis to Southern Reporter. “If we follow the historical development perspective, we must first go to 3.0 and then 4.0, but this will lose competitiveness. The fact is that we have the opportunity to directly achieve 2.0 to 4.0. Transformation. The new technology and standards that will be produced in the transformation will have a good chance of being controlled by the Chinese manufacturing industry."
However, the US’s U Shoubao holds another view. “The main goal of automation is to improve production efficiency, which often requires a comprehensive upgrade of the production line from raw material supply, product control, etc. from inside to outside. This is a gradual process. Of course, companies must master the core technology of automation, The robot uses the software application system to 'string' up. Otherwise, the cost of automation will not come, and no problem will be solved if there is a problem."
All of this means that every company is carefully designing its own transformation path. If you use the 3.0 standard, companies must update their equipment or it will be difficult to automate. However, if we use the 4.0 standard, the core should be placed on the Internet, which is a soft system construction. Instead of blindly launching a robot.
The interconnected factory is Haier's exploration of Curve Overtaking 4.0, which can directly talk with users to meet large-scale customization needs. After the user submits the order online, the intelligent manufacturing system automatically schedules the production and transmits the information to each process line and all module dealers and logistics providers. Each order is designed on demand, on-demand, and on-demand. In order to achieve this, zero inventory and zero receivables were realized. As early as 2012, Haier began the planning and construction of digital interconnection factories, and made subversive adjustments from three aspects: organization, mechanism and process. Taking Haier Zhengzhou Air Conditioning Interconnect Factory as an example, it currently has more than 200 flexible user customization schemes consisting of 11 general modules and 4 personality modules. The user can freely choose the color, style, performance, structure, etc. of the air conditioner according to personal preference, and customize the exclusive product.
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