Recently, the world economic forum announced that 13 new factories will join the global lighthouse network this year. Among them, the six Chinese factories selected include four home appliance industry chain factories, namely Haier Zhengzhou water heater interconnection factory, Midea Jingzhou refrigerator factory, Midea Hefei washing machine factory, and BOE Fuzhou 8.5 generation semiconductor display production line (upstream of home appliance enterprises). Over the past five years, a total of 9 factories in the field of household appliances have been selected as lighthouse factories in China. Industry experts told reporters that this also means that China's leading household appliance enterprises have been at the forefront of intelligent manufacturing. Lighthouse factory is synonymous with intelligent manufacturing Since 2018, the world economic forum and McKinsey consulting have certified 103 lighthouse factories worldwide in 8 batches. Among them, 37 are located in China, covering electronic products, household appliances, automobiles, industrial equipment, consumer goods, medical equipment, steel products and other industries, accounting for more than 1 / 3, ranking first in the world. According to the reporter, lighthouse factories are mainly divided into three categories. "End to end lighthouse factory" refers to the realization of end-to-end digitization and intelligence in supply chain, products and services. "Manufacturing lighthouse factory" refers to the organic combination of automation, digitization and intelligence to significantly improve product quality and efficiency. "Sustainable lighthouse factory" means to fulfill the commitment to environmental sustainability on the basis of the above. Being selected as lighthouse factory means that the enterprise has excellent leadership in using the fourth industrial revolution technology to promote the transformation of factory, value chain and business model. Insiders pointed out that the biggest feature of Lighthouse factory is the integration and comprehensive application of technologies such as intelligence, digitization and automation. Its evaluation standard mainly depends on whether a large number of new technologies of the fourth industrial revolution such as automation, industrial Internet, cloud computing, big data and 5g are adopted, and these new technologies are comprehensively used to realize business model, product R & D model, production model Quality management mode, consumer service mode and other all-round changes to promote efficiency improvement, energy conservation and emission reduction and business optimization are synonymous with high scientific and technological content, strong innovation, high labor productivity, good economic benefits and green and low-carbon development. They are the vanguard model of intelligent manufacturing and digital transformation. The data of factory efficiency is the best evidence. For example, the selected BOE Fuzhou 8.5 generation semiconductor display production line has reduced the unit cost of BOE Fuzhou production line by 34% and increased the overall output by 30% by building a fully automatic production system and widely using artificial intelligence and advanced analysis technology; Through the establishment of AI driven energy management system, the unit power consumption of the production line has decreased significantly by 39%, the unit water consumption has decreased by 27%, and the ability of green sustainable development has been improved, becoming the benchmark of intelligent manufacturing. Francisco Betti, director of the platform "shaping the future of advanced manufacturing industry and value chain" of the world economic forum, said that under the background of the world's efforts to meet many challenges, the lighthouse factory has made extraordinary achievements, created sustainable development benefits and improved ecological efficiency while achieving business objectives. It is hoped that these lighthouse factories will continue to illuminate the future for global production, take a responsible approach and actively build a future manufacturing industry that benefits mankind, society and the environment. Leading household appliance enterprises are at the forefront of intelligent manufacturing In the past five years, among the 37 Chinese factories selected as lighthouse factories, home appliance factories accounted for 9 seats, of which Haier Group and Midea Group accounted for 4 seats respectively, and BOE, as an upstream representative, accounted for 1 seat. According to the reporter, BOE Fuzhou generation 8.5 semiconductor display production line, which was selected as the lighthouse factory this time, mainly develops and produces high-end liquid crystal display products with high resolution (UHD), large size and low power consumption, and is widely used in smart home and other fields. The lighthouse factories of Haier Group are Qingdao central air conditioning interconnection factory (selected in 2018), Shenyang refrigerator interconnection factory (selected in 2020), Tianjin washing machine interconnection factory (selected in 2021) and Zhengzhou water heater interconnection factory newly selected this year. Taking advantage of the high reliability and low time delay of 5g network, Zhengzhou Haier water heater interconnection factory realizes the automatic positioning and assembly of compressor, torque monitoring of nut tightening operation and abnormal alarm through machine vision, 5g, MEC detection, operation and analysis technologies for the key process of water heater production, so as to improve production efficiency and product quality. It is reported that by using big data, 5g edge computing and UWB solutions, we have established close contact with suppliers, factories and customers. The order response lead time has been accelerated by 25%. From 2020 to early 2021, we have improved production efficiency by 31% and product quality by 26%. The lighthouse factories of Midea Group are Nansha air conditioning factory (selected in 2020), Shunde microwave oven factory (selected in 2021), Jingzhou refrigerator factory and Hefei washing machine factory newly selected this year. It is reported that Midea Jingzhou refrigerator factory has realized the mode of mixed line production, which can find out the optimal planning and scheduling under a variety of conditions. A production line can produce multiple batches of products at the same time. Relying on the automatic quality management of artificial intelligence, the comprehensive intellectualization of quality control from analysis, early warning, management and control, prediction and decision-making was realized. The real-time quality detection was carried out at 199 quality monitoring points, and the process defect rate was reduced by 53%. Overall, the factory's labor productivity increased by 52%, delivery time shortened by 25%, quality defects decreased by 64%, and customer satisfaction increased by 11%. Haier and Midea have absolute advantages in the global household appliance lighthouse factories, covering four major electrical categories respectively. Zhao Meimei, assistant president and general manager of Research Department of AVC, said in an interview with China Electronics News that digitization and intelligence have always been important criteria for the selection of Lighthouse factories. The eight factories of Haier Group and Midea Group can be selected mainly because of their advantages in advanced production line, system architecture, product quality, factory efficiency, technological innovation, intelligent manufacturing and process supervision, This also means that the "leading enterprise" of China's power industry has been at the front end of intelligent manufacturing. Yang Ling, deputy general manager of CCID Consulting intelligent equipment industry research center, pointed out in an interview with China Electronics News that the core of the future development of China's home appliance industry is self innovation. For example, Midea's layout around robots and Gree's layout around new energy are the concrete embodiment of self innovation. From the selection of two enterprises and eight factories of Lighthouse factory, we can see the determination and effectiveness of China's home appliance enterprises in self innovation around the track of intelligent manufacturing. Share the new value brought by the "Lighthouse" Lighthouse factory has become a new trend and wind vane. The 14th five year plan for intelligent manufacturing development clearly proposes to build an intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory. In February this year, the Ministry of industry and information technology and other four ministries and commissions announced the list of units and excellent scenes of intelligent manufacturing demonstration factories in 2021. A total of 110 intelligent manufacturing demonstration factories and 241 excellent scenes of intelligent manufacturing were listed. Among them, there are five factories in the household appliance industry, including Haier Tianjin washing machine manufacturing demonstration factory, boss electrical appliances kitchen appliances intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory, Midea air conditioning intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory, TCL color TV manufacturing demonstration factory and Haier central air conditioning intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory. In 2022, China added four lighthouse factories and five intelligent manufacturing demonstration factories, which is a successful footnote to the transformation of Intelligent Manufacturing in the household appliance industry. However, industry experts also pointed out that there is still a long way to go for intelligent manufacturing of household appliances from a new starting point. From the perspective of the categories produced by the eight home appliance terminal factories selected into the lighthouse factory, they cover five categories: refrigerator, washing machine, air conditioner, water heater and microwave oven. The categories selected into China's intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory cover four categories: washing machine, kitchen TV, air conditioner and color TV. There is still much room for improvement in the intelligent production of other categories such as small household appliances. Zhao Meimei pointed out to reporters that production line construction and capital investment, factory system architecture and intelligent equipment layout, product quality and process assurance and factory efficiency improvement, as well as energy conservation, environmental protection and low-carbon control are the key promotion directions of Intelligent Manufacturing in China's household appliance industry. Yang Ling suggested that the future deployment of home appliance enterprises in intelligent manufacturing should focus on the typical and general intelligent manufacturing application scenarios of the home appliance industry, actively learn from advanced solutions, select scenarios with strong applicability, and accelerate the improvement of their own intelligent level. The second is to focus on the digital mapping model in the stages of design, manufacturing, testing, operation and maintenance, promote the combination of digital design and virtual simulation technology, build a data-driven innovation model, reduce the design cost of household appliances and accelerate the iterative efficiency of their own products. Midea Group recently said that in the future, based on the "lighthouse factory" and "lighthouse network", through the output experience of Midea cloud intelligence, it will better enable industries and jointly build ecology, help the overall transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry, and contribute to the "carbon peak and carbon neutralization" in China and even the world. Haier Group pointed out that in the future, with the goal of building an industrial intelligent manufacturing benchmark, it will closely combine the achievements of technological innovation with industrial application scenarios by building a lighthouse factory with enterprises, so as to empower more manufacturing enterprises in the industrial chain and region and share the new value brought by the "Lighthouse". BOE pointed out that based on the industrial practice in the field of semiconductor display, it will integrate the core technology advantages such as artificial intelligence, big data and the Internet of things accumulated in the transformation of the Internet of things and the reusable platform and system capabilities precipitated in the field of intelligent manufacturing, empower the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain with the help of BOE industrial Internet platform, further open the experience of intelligent operation and management, and accelerate the upgrading of digital intelligence in various industries. (Xinhua News Agency)