Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In order to meet the coming peak sales season, Xiao Xiong Intelligent Home Appliances Manufacturing Base located in Shunde District of Foshan City is running at full capacity and stepping up production.

But unlike the usual factory scene, Xiao Xiong's injection molding workshop is spacious and bright, and the workers are not dense: injection moulding machines connect the raw material pipes and parts conveyor belts "end to end", and the plastic particles that are put into them will become bread machine bases after 45 seconds. The eight automated production lines here, with a total of 62 machines, can produce more than 230000 parts a day, but only a dozen people are needed to manage them.

According to statistics, the production efficiency of this intelligent chemical plant is more than twice that of the ordinary factory. In September 2022, the factory was also selected as a digital intelligent demonstration factory in Foshan. And this is just one of the five intelligent production bases of Little Bear Electric Appliances.

From the beginning of the 800 kilowatt factory to the intelligent production base with a total of 580,000 tons, it can be said that Little Bear is not only the personal experience of building the industrial cluster of "the capital of household appliances in China" in Shunde, but also the witness and participant in realizing "corner overtaking" through the transformation of mathematical intelligence in the era of industry 4.0.

Mathematical intelligence manufacturing, double increase in quality and efficiency

The fourth industrial revolution, dominated by information technology, is opening a new "great navigation era" in the field of traditional manufacturing. In February this year, the State issued the overall layout Plan for the Construction of Digital China, which stressed the need to continue to promote the integration of the digital economy and the real economy, so as to digitally drive production and life.

Behind the fact that digitization and intelligence have become the main tone of the transformation of China's manufacturing industry, there is an imbalance between the traditional production mode, quality and efficiency standards and the rapidly changing market demand. In the field of small household appliances, for example, the "home economy" catalyses a surge in market demand, but although the contract manufacturing mode adopted by some enterprises can reduce costs, it cannot guarantee that the production capacity and efficiency can be changed and adjusted flexibly.

The intelligent upgrading of the production system is the only way. Born in manufacturing and thriving in e-commerce, Xiao Bear has long been aware of this-for Little Bear, which has more than 60 product categories and more than 40 million years of shipments, from user orders to manufacturing, warehousing and distribution, the whole chain is interlinked, and the management of categories, factories, channels and other chains is becoming more and more difficult. If it is still managed by people, handled by hands, and memorized by the brain, it is already an impossible task.

This is also the internal cause of the manufacture of Mathematical Intelligence on the beach. In 2021, the first phase of Xiao Xiong Intelligent small Household Appliance Manufacturing Base, with an investment of more than 300 million yuan and a construction area of 100,000 square meters, was officially put into use. The factory realizes automation in logistics warehousing, injection molding, final assembly and other links. Workers only need to pick up the tablet computer to control the operation of the machine, and all kinds of information can be displayed on the electronic screen of the workshop in real time. It is realized that "product scheduling follows the order, logistics distribution follows the production line, and quality inspection follows the process."

According to statistics, after the intelligent and digital upgrade, the staff of Xiao Xiong Electric injection molding workshop has been reduced by 50%, but the production capacity has increased by 10-15%; the electronic workshop originally needed 2 seconds to manually insert an electronic device, but now the machine operation takes only 0.14 seconds; the inspection link has also changed from manual inspection to "AI visual inspection", which has greatly improved both efficiency and accuracy.

At present, Xiao Xiong Electric Appliance has invested 1 billion yuan, successively completed the reconstruction and expansion of Xiao Xiong Science and Technology Park, Junan Park and Wusha Park, and built a mathematical intelligence manufacturing territory of "five intelligent manufacturing bases + spare parts production bases + operation bases". It has more than 70 production lines, including 2 top-level domestic automatic production lines-shredder automatic production line and health pot automatic production line.

Digital construction, full chain upgrade

Digitization is a long-term systematic project. For enterprises, the automation of manufacturing chain is the first step in the transformation of digital intelligence, but not the last step. Similarly, Little Bear Electric Appliance, which makes the transformation of mathematical intelligence, has more than that to explore and worry about the road of high-quality development.

At the launching ceremony of the second phase of the intelligent small household appliance manufacturing base of Xiao Xiong Appliance in May last year, Li Yifeng, founder and chairman of Xiao Xiong Appliance, said: "in the next three years, Xiao Xiong Electric Appliance plans to invest more than 100 million yuan in digital construction. Further consolidate the entire business chain of the enterprise all-digital capacity, expand the digital platform boundary."

Stepping stone left imprint, scratching iron marks, Little Bear Electric's "full-chain digital upgrade" is not just talk.

Over the past year or so, Xiao Xiong has steadily promoted the layout of digital manufacturing, while defining the "three-wheel drive" of processes, data and systems: through system construction and integration in various business areas of research, production, supply, marketing and finance, and the use of new generation digital platforms such as ERP, digital manufacturing platform and marketing business platform, to strengthen its own data analysis and processing capabilities and achieve efficient coordination of enterprise operation.

In March this year, Xiao Bear announced that it had reached a deep strategic cooperation with IBM to promote digital transformation around "one major business and technology restructuring" and "three major management upgrades". The goal is also clear: on the one hand, through the upgrading of ERP, the core operating resources such as procurement, production, inventory and distribution will be integrated to create a new generation of digital base; on the other hand, through the digital ability to enhance the ability to transform product strategies according to user needs, to truly achieve "product first, people-oriented".

Today, digitization has become a necessary element for small household appliance enterprises to meet unknown challenges and explore new opportunities. Through full-chain efforts and fully embracing digital upgrading, Little Bear Appliances has achieved more efficient manufacturing, more accurate product iterations and wider service coverage, undoubtedly reshaping and continuing its core competitiveness in this new era.

It can be said that it is the "small and beautiful" of chain, operation and process that supports the "big and comprehensive" of category, experience and word-of-mouth, and finally achieves the upward curve at the end of the market: according to Xiao Xiong's report for the first three quarters of 2023, the company achieved operating income of 3.318 billion yuan, an increase of 22.96% over the same period last year; net profit belonging to shareholders of listed companies was 316 million yuan, up 31.24% from the same period last year. The R & D expenditure during the reporting period was 106 million yuan, an increase of 11.74% over the same period last year.

Boutique strategy, lighting the lighthouse

If we say that the numerical intelligence transformation is the superstructure of the enterprise's comprehensive strength, then the core technology accumulation, the strategic precipitation of the brand and so on are the premise of supporting the transformation and the base of long-term development. But it didn't happen overnight.

Similarly, at a time when thousands of industries are trying to change, Little Bear can sail a unique route of digital intelligence in the competition of thousands of sails and hundreds of boats, which is also due to the beacon-like guidance and guide of its "boutique strategy". In 2022, Little Bear proposed to take the boutique route and make great strides towards the only goal of "young people". Since then, enterprises have completed the mode switch from "watch the road" to "follow the navigation".

Under the pull of the boutique strategy, Little Bear Electric Appliances has a common value drive in terms of products, R & D and design, that is, "to provide a variety of exquisite life experiences for young people."

In terms of high-quality products, Little Bear Electric Appliances insists on strengthening rigid demand categories while streamlining the number of SKU categories, so as to further optimize product experience and explosive competitiveness with "innovation and steady growth". For example, in response to the trend of "camping fever" in recent years, Little Bear has launched a series of subdivided products such as cassette stoves and outdoor power supplies, and has developed a series of mother-to-child products such as multi-functional milk regulators and "grinding" cooking sticks, which focus on the opening of the three-child policy. Under the traditional long board "health pot" category, Little Bear Electric Appliances sold more than 28 million units in all channels from 2015 to 2022, achieving the first sales of health pots for five consecutive years.

Of course, the timely application of products is inseparable from the promotion of research and development and design. In recent years, Xiaoxiong Electric Appliance has continuously focused on R & D and set up more than 10 R & D teams, including "pre-research on user technology". In 2022, R & D expenses increased by 5.76% compared with the same period last year, and the number of patents applied for reached more than 1500. At the same time, Xiao Xiong Electric Appliance also has a 10 + design team, which links the world's first-class design resources, continues to drive product iterations accurately around changes in user needs, and its creative electrical appliance industry design center is also recognized as a "national industrial design center".

Wu Xiaobo, a famous financial writer, once mentioned in his New year's speech: "among the manufacturing factories and physical enterprises in the world, these entrepreneurs who are fighting in China today are the most radical practitioners of industrial intelligence in the world."

I have never seen such an extensive and huge industrial intelligence experiment, which is that there has never been such a large and heavy industrial system that can complete the "elephant turn" as flexibly and effectively as the Chinese manufacturing industry. Therefore, Xiao Xiong Electric reflects not only the strategy and growth of a brand, but also the innovation and practice of contemporary Chinese manufacturing enterprises-- the Chinese manufacturing industry that has broken the ice for decades and struggled to catch up with it. Is building a unique core competitiveness in the new digital era, coruscating the vitality of high-quality development.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.