Haier / Site Shanghai

Haier is one of the global market leaders in the field of large household appliances. In his Shanghai site, Haier manufactures drier and washing machines. With a focus on digitization and continuous optimization of the whole value stream, the company decided to implement a broad spectrum of state-of-the-art technologies. In particular, the information flow and the resource management along the value stream (end-to-end) were defined as key tasks for expanding the already high level of digitalization capabilities.

The awarded site is committed to building the industry’s first “metaverse future factory”, integrating smart technologies to form a new intelligent and sustainable manufacturing system. Specific goals at the site are:

• Establishing a high-precision Industry 4.0 solution to accurately match consumer needs. This includes detailed process information from the utilization of the products as well as independent decision-making by the system for all factor scenarios in production.
• Building flexible manufacturing capabilities to achieve large-scale and efficient manufacturing.

The winner of the INDUSTRIE 4.0 AWARD uses technologies such as 5G, multi-energy IoT applications and an open big data microservice architecture to realise multidimensional energy management in its factory. Among other things, Haier records the energy consumption of its systems in real time and issues real-time alerts to reduce abnormal losses in energy consumption. In addition, flexible production schedules based on peak load characteristics and electricity price differences optimise the factory’s electricity costs.

Laser sensing, jump detection, machine learning and other technologies are applied to real-time detect the inner cylinder runout quality in the simulated running balance test environment of clothes dryer. 18 process parameters of inner cylinder processing are automatically associated for spectrum analysis and intelligent judgment, thus improving the detection efficiency by 30% and detection accuracy by 50%.

The Industry 4.0 solution is using an AI deep learning algorithm to train and learn processing parameters that affect the balance performance of clothes dryers. Through real-time collection, analysis and prediction of the quality change trend of several inner cylinder processing parameters, the prediction accuracy is as high as 98%.

Through the digital twin platform of the inner cylinder, the operating status of 24 devices is collected in real time, and automatically compared and analyzed with the equipment health curve. Possible equipment faults and maintenance needs are predicted in advance, reducing equipment downtime by 50%.

By utilizing AR technology, remote maintenance personnel can view the status and sensor data of equipment in real-time, quickly diagnose the cause of equipment faults, and remotely guide on-site operators in equipment maintenance. The result was a 20% improvement in maintenance efficiency.

The award winner realized a three-layer logistics system consisting of ground AGV, air storage chain, and intelligent warehouses. By achieving automatic transportation and precise distribution of semi-finished and finished products, the factory improved his turnover efficiency by 40%. Through the interconnection among equipment systems such as elevators, AGVs, stackers, and conveyor lines, the rapid production transition of the inner cylinder can be achieved.