HEFEI, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- A drone hovered above a home appliance industrial park in eastern Chinese city of Wuhu, Anhui Province. Equipped with several detection devices running in sync, it efficiently fed real-time production scenes back to the "smart brain" using a 5G network.
"Every manufacturing process is working to improve quality and efficiency," said Guo Kexiong, digital director of the Midea Kitchen and Heating Intelligent Home Appliance Industrial Park.
After a decade of fierce price competition, the profit margins for ordinary household appliance makers in China have dwindled considerably, positioning the sector as a more conventional industry.
Yet, the integration of smart technology is igniting a transformative revolution that presents new opportunities for the country's home appliance manufacturers to survive and thrive.
SMART MANUFACTURING
Hefei, the capital city of Anhui, is now home to two "lighthouse factories" for home appliances -- Media Group's laundry machine plant and Haier's air conditioner plant. Lighthouse factories are plants recognized by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for their leadership in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. By 2023, of WEF's 153 lighthouses across the globe, 62 are based in China.
Haier's plant, included into the WEF list last year, is the world's first lighthouse factory for home central air conditioning appliances. In this factory, the hustle and bustle of production workers has given way to cameras that can "see through" the interior of parts, while inspectors wearing AI glasses patrol the facility in an orderly manner.
Advanced algorithms, digital twins and knowledge graphs have been integrated into the research and development, production and testing processes of home central air conditioning units, leading to a significant improvement in product quality and production efficiency.
The Haier Hefei factory has pioneered an innovative platform that integrates big data technology with ant colony optimization (ACO), sparing the traditional trial-and-error methods.
As a result, the factory has seen a 58 percent decrease in product defect rates, a 49 percent increase in per capita efficiency and a 22 percent reduction in manufacturing costs per unit. Additionally, it has achieved a significant reduction of 447,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually in manufacturing processes.
According to the white paper released by the WEF in December 2023 titled "Global Lighthouse Network: Adopting AI at Speed and Scale," the newly recognized lighthouses in 2023 have implemented AI with high impact across every step of the supply chain.
Meiling, a renowned refrigerator maker in China, was once on the brink of bankruptcy in the 1980s. It made a remarkable turnaround by shifting to refrigerator manufacturing. Now, Meiling stands at a new crossroads, striving to embrace intelligent technologies to revitalize the traditional brand.
