Automation Generation Is Coming

Since the beginning of this year, Industry 4.0 and the Internet factory have become topics of interest to the home appliance industry. Taking advantage of the "Internet +" trend, some well-known home appliance companies have taken the lead in the battlefield of manufacturing transformation and intelligence. They hope to take advantage of the "China Made 2025" Dongfeng and win the initiative in the industry reshuffle. right. However, the reporter also found in the interview that in addition to the above-mentioned home appliance giants, medium and large-scale manufacturing enterprises such as Wanjiale, Wanhe, Kangbao, Galanz, Vantage and Sochi in the Pearl River Delta are also eager to move, showing strong interest in automate machine.

Rising labor costs accelerates transformation

From the enterprise level, the implementation of robotic automated production is not only in response to national strategies, but also in its own operational considerations. Liu Buchen, a senior observer in the home appliance industry, said in an interview that the transformation of home appliance giants to automated production is due to the reduction of labor costs and the enhancement of corporate profitability. After the automation of robots in home appliance enterprises, although the initial investment cost is very high, the cost of maintenance in the next few years is very low, and the production efficiency can be greatly improved. More importantly, the production can achieve complete standardization and greatly improve. The quality of the products determines that Chinese companies will use a large number of robots for production in the future.

In fact, with the gradual disappearance of the demographic dividend, labor costs have become the biggest weakness of traditional manufacturing. While labor costs have risen, the difficulty of recruiting workers has also plagued traditional home appliances companies such as Midea and Gree.

The industry is facing a new round of shuffling

Whether it is Haier's “transparent factory” to achieve user customization, Gree “product precision requirements” or the US “double intelligence” strategy (Smart Home + Smart Manufacturing). On the one hand, automated production is preparing for smart manufacturing, and on the other hand, it is to complete the intelligentization of the overall home appliance. Some insiders said that traditional home appliance manufacturers can generally achieve intelligence on a single product, but they have not been completed in the overall interconnection, but to achieve the intelligentization of the overall home appliances, the core parts have very high precision requirements. It needs to be robotized to complete.

In fact, the ability to use automated equipment or robots is a big brand with long product lines and huge demand. This is undoubtedly far-reaching for a large number of second- and third-line home appliance brands. Liu Buchen believes that after the company implements automated production, the product price decreases. The days leading to the future of the second and third line brands are getting more and more sad. At present, the home appliance industry is the fastest-growing industry, so this reshuffle will take the lead in the home appliance industry.