Midea has reduced labor costs by 70 per cent as part of its Industry 4.0 strategy which involves upgrading the company's manufacturing base to improve efficiency.
More than 800 robots have been deployed to achieve a four per cent worker-machine ratio and guaranteeing a 99.9 per cent 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, according to Midea's central air conditioning general manager, Tian Mingli.
"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," he said.
Inefficient tasks requiring significant physical strength such as installing compressors and fluid reservoirs have also been completely automated by robot Charge Coupled Devices (CCD) developed by Midea. Another refrigerant oil filling robot that employs a 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 $US21.34 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 centre 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 rockets and missiles to achieve even coating automatically with top level adherence.
"Midea is now at the forefront to lead Chinese companies into the Industry 4.0 era with advanced integration in equipment network, intelligent logistics, production transparency and information management," Tian said.
Established in 1968, Midea is a leading heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems manufacturer with production bases throughout China and other countries.