With the introduction of concepts like "Made in China 2025" and Germany's Industry 4.0, there has been a push to transform China from a "world processing center" to a "world manufacturing center" to enhance national core competitiveness. This has accelerated the deployment of "new infrastructure" in China, with favorable "spring breeze" policies continuously emerging. Many companies are attempting to seize these opportunities to accelerate development. An unexpected pandemic made more companies aware of the importance of digital transformation for business growth. "New infrastructure" will promote the collaborative development of the industrial chain, giving rise to more "cloud factories," enhancing supply chain capabilities and efficiency through digitization, software, and algorithms. Let's delve into Midea Group's mould factory to uncover the secrets of the intelligent "cloud factory."

Established in 1968, Midea Group is a leading company in the home appliance manufacturing industry. It is a global technology group covering four major segments: consumer appliances, HVAC systems, robotics and automation systems, and innovation ventures. Midea has approximately 200 subsidiaries worldwide, employs around 150,000 people, and operates in over 200 countries and regions. Midea Group has multiple mould factories in various locations such as Foshan, Hefei, and Zhongshan, supporting its production efforts. Its vast business coverage, numerous subsidiaries, and large workforce present significant challenges for production management and business decision-making, with production coordination being the key to enhancing efficiency. With the advancement of new material technologies, communication technologies, and cloud computing, the "Internet of Everything" becomes possible. In the wave of industrial internet, innovative companies leverage the intelligent "cloud factory" model to capture significant market share. Midea understands this well, prioritizing the enhancement of operational management efficiency using advanced technologies and innovative management concepts as an industry benchmark in the home appliance sector.

As early as 2010, Midea Group began exploring transitions in mould manufacturing. Through long-term collaboration with EMAN, Midea highly values EMAN's technology and services. EMAN's extensive industry experience has provided strong support for Midea Group's digital transformation in mould manufacturing. In 2018, to achieve unified intelligent and transparent management across multiple mould factories, Midea Group once again collaborated with EMAN to construct Midea Group's mould platform cloud factory. After a series of needs assessments, EMAN formulated a strategy for Midea Group based on "unified planning, phased implementation, and rapid replication." With close collaboration between both parties, the Midea Group mould platform cloud factory project progressed smoothly.

In 2018, Midea initiated the implementation of EMAN's EMan Intelligent Manufacturing Execution System in the Foshan Kitchen Appliance Mould Division, completing delivery and going live in the same year. Subsequently, in 2019, Guangdong Midea Precision Mould Technology Co., Ltd. completed the project delivery and went live, followed by the launch and implementation of projects in 2020 for Midea Hefei Refrigerator Division, Midea Hefei Washing Machine Division, and Midea Zhongshan Household Appliances.

Cloud-based Deployment System Architecture Diagram

The collaborative intelligent manufacturing of digital multiple factories has, to a certain extent, realized the preliminary concept of Midea's "Cloud Factory". Through the implementation of the multi-factory collaborative management platform project for molds, Midea Group has achieved unified platform and standard management for multiple remote mold factories such as Midea Kitchen Electric Appliances and Midea Precision. This has enabled efficient collaborative production among various subsidiaries under the group.

At the same time, this platform seamlessly integrates with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), EAM (Enterprise Asset Management), QMS (Quality Management System), SRM (Supplier Relationship Management) and other internal systems within Midea Group through ESB data bus, resulting in more accurate and effective business data and significant integration effects.

For large manufacturing enterprises, issues such as a large number of scattered and unorganized mould standard parts and a lack of data management can lead to duplicated modeling of identical standard parts, angled lifters, sliders, and more. Furthermore, there may be numerous disparate design standards across factories, making it difficult to maintain data synchronization, impacting mould design efficiency and quality. Thus, the unification of design standards and the application of modularized data are crucial for enhancing the production efficiency of multi-factory enterprises like Midea.

Through preliminary needs research, EMAN assisted Midea in building a company-specific unified mould standard parts library management platform with the EMoldDM Mould Design Master, systematically promoting standardization across Midea's regional subsidiaries and outsourced designs. Additionally, at Midea's request, EMAN extended the EMoldDM Mould Design Master's application to mould suppliers, ensuring maximum consistency in Midea Group's outsourced design standards, significantly reducing outsourced design rework rates and design quality anomalies. Midea's standard parts are fully controlled and categorized by software, effectively preventing design anomalies due to unfamiliarity with standards by designers, as well as eliminating design non-standardization caused by human error. A well-established mould design platform facilitates the classification and effective control of design standards for Midea.

By summarizing and classifying Midea's product data and structural data, EMAN built a modular data platform using the mould frame and structure design platforms for Midea. This enables a high degree of reusability for similar product mould data. Unified management through a system platform allows quick searching and calling of corresponding product modular data, rapid generation of complete 3D mapping data, BOM table exports, and drawing generation, avoiding repetitive work, and facilitating standardized production, procurement, and processing cost control.

EMAN's EMoldDM Intelligent Mould Design Software has increased Midea's design standardization rate by over 80%, improved design efficiency by over 30%, and reduced quality incidents by over 50%.

Statistics show that in traditional mould manufacturing, the actual effective utilization time of machinery is only about 50%, with the remaining time wasted on auxiliary operations such as part clamping, programming, and tool preparation. Moreover, heavy reliance on human operation often leads to extended processing programming time and frequent equipment operation errors, ultimately resulting in low processing efficiency and severe resource wastage. More importantly, in recent years, companies have faced an increasingly worsening labor shortage issue. For mould enterprises aiming to compete in international markets, enhancing productivity relies on technological advancements and the introduction of automated and intelligent solutions.

EMAN’s comprehensive automation solution, centered around electrode programming, enables Midea Group to achieve intelligent programming and parameter pre-adjustment, freeing workshop workers from labor-intensive tasks such as electrode handling, clamping, and positioning, reducing external preparation workloads, and improving the utilization rate, efficiency, and accuracy of inspection machines.

Currently, with EMAN’s comprehensive automation solution, each shift in Midea’s automated line can inspect up to 150 electrodes, surpassing over 50% non-automated line processing efficiency.

Traditional industrial enterprises are often affected by production equipment, production lines, processes, and personnel, leading to uncontrollable production cycles and ineffective tracking of production anomalies. As the most crucial resource in industrial production, various data concerning production equipment directly impact product and enterprise operational efficiency. Increasingly, companies seek to collect and analyze equipment status data in real-time to maximize equipment utilization and shorten the entire manufacturing cycle. Shop floor IoT and visualization solutions meet this most practical and frequent production need.

With nearly 60 core production equipment, Midea Group Mould Factory faces significant challenges in real-time equipment data collection and analysis. By implementing EMAN’s EMdc Intelligent Shop Floor IoT and visualization solutions, Midea has achieved core equipment networking, increasing equipment OEE by over 20%.

EMAN’s EMdc system analyzes the output and production efficiency of designated equipment, teams, and personnel, allowing Midea Group to better conduct performance assessments for equipment and personnel. Real-time collection of production site output and quality data reduces a large amount of manual reporting, achieving paperless production while providing real-time, reliable data for MES, ERP, and EMan systems. It also facilitates workshop production cost data accounting, providing scientific data for Midea to calculate the product's final cost, effectively assisting managers in making more informed production task decisions.

As a technology company that has been one of the first to transform within its industry, Midea places great emphasis on leveraging new technology to improve operational management. In recent years, Midea has actively ventured into industrial automation and the robotics industry, establishing a solid hardware foundation. Simultaneously, Midea has entered the software domain, developing in-house big data platforms, and exploring automation and business solutions adapted to various complex application scenarios. Under digital transformation, Midea has successfully achieved software- and data-driven full value chain operations.

Based on the industrial internet, EMAN's mould management platform breaks down the information silos between Midea Group's subsidiaries, integrating external partners to achieve information interaction, promote efficient collaborative production, and reduce manufacturing costs. It assists Midea in building a series of cloud-based intelligent "cloud factories" with features like cloud management, cloud manufacturing, cloud design, and cloud collaboration. Moreover, this intelligent "cloud factory" model continues to be replicated.