Nov 21 2015
As a global leader in residential and commercial air conditioning industry, Midea's Industry 4.0 strategy has successfully transformed and upgraded the company's manufacturing bases to improve the production efficiency by reducing 70 percent of total labor costs.
Midea achieved four percent worker-machine ratio by deploying more than 800 robots in all production bases for the whole group
Midea achieved a four percent worker-machine ratio by deploying over 800 robots in all production bases for the whole group also guaranteeing a 99.9 percent pass rate.
Midea's central air conditioning base, major core components production lines including main boards, compressors, metal plates as well as condensers and evaporators have been upgraded to robotic assemblies.
"The pioneering fully automatic bending machine developed by Midea broke through the limit of manual bending in the production of condensers and evaporators, the machine can deliver Automated Guided Vehicle to the loading zone to realize comprehensive automation from loading materials to bending and discharging," explained Tian Mingli, general manager of Midea Central Air Conditioning.
Inefficient tasks requiring significant physical strength such as installing compressors and fluid reservoirs have also been completed automatically by robot Charge Coupled Devices (CCD) developed by Midea. Another refrigerant oil filling robot that employs CCD visual identification system and robotic arm merge the robot into an oil filling machine to achieve full automation in the filing process.
Midea has invested USD 21.34 million to import the original production line from Eisenmann to build a manufacturing platform of water heaters.
Eisenmann is a leading international supplier of production systems in fields ranging from material flow automation to environmental technology. The production center Midea implemented features the core technology called E+ Blue Diamond.
The fully automatic Eisenmann sand blasting machine has adjustable internal parts to meet the requirements of different workpieces, while the more intelligent Eisenmann coating machine uses imported materials that are commonly applied to rocket and missiles to achieve even coating automatically with top level adherence.
"From the current developing trends in central air condition industry, Midea is now at the forefront to lead Chinese companies into Industry 4.0 era with advanced integration in equipment network, intelligent logistics, production transparency and information management," Tian said.