Under the background of digital economy, every “ambitious” enterprise is striving to make accurate decisions based on data, and to achieve zero distance between market and users, between R&D and users, and between manufacturing and users.
On January 8, 2021, with the theme of “Future Cooking, Digital Manufacturing”, the Ninth-level Central Digital Platform and Zero-Point Manufacturing news conference of Robam Appliances was officially held. At the conference, the Ninth-level Central Digital Platform and “Zero-Point Manufacturing” model built by Robam Appliances were debuted, which successfully built a new pattern more suitable for Chinese kitchen appliance manufacturing by integrating industrial Internet and consumer Internet in a real sense based on user-centered and digital-driven business.
Fig 1. The Ninth-level Central Digital Platform of Robam Appliances
The Future with Technology,
A New Benchmark for Intelligent Manufacturing
Along with the continuous landing and in-depth development of the national strategy “Made in China 2025”, intelligent manufacturing has not only become the main direction of transformation and upgrading of Chinese manufacturing, but also become an important driving force of the national strategy “Made in China 2025”. At the very moment of a “dual circulation” development pattern in which domestic economic cycle plays a leading role while international economic cycle remains its extension and supplement, the traditional manufacturing industry also ushers in a new transformation path with the domestic demand as the guide and intelligent manufacturing as the main line.
Along with the continuous landing and in-depth development of the national strategy “Made in China 2025”, intelligent manufacturing has not only become the main direction of transformation and upgrading of Chinese manufacturing, but also become an important driving force of the national strategy “Made in China 2025”. At the very moment of a “dual circulation” development pattern in which domestic economic cycle plays a leading role while international economic cycle remains its extension and supplement, the traditional manufacturing industry also ushers in a new transformation path with the domestic demand as the guide and intelligent manufacturing as the main line.
At the meeting, Mr. Xia Zhiming, vice president of Robam Appliances said, “In the past year 2020, Robam Appliances has achieved counter-trend growth, exceeding the target at the beginning of the year, leading global sales of range hoods and hobs for the sixth consecutive years, with strong performance of new growth drivers such as trend categories and bonus channels, and has been completely free from the impact of external uncertainties such as the epidemic. “
Robam Appliances has started its transformation and upgrading since 2010, built the mechanization model for the industry in 2012 and the industry’s first digital intelligent manufacturing base in 2015, giving the high-end brands a more matching and advanced manufacturing capacity. In the past 10 years, the intelligent manufacturing of Robam Appliances has progressed from partial machine replacement to deep “mechanization and automation” integration. It has been selected as the “2016 Intelligent Manufacturing Pilot Demonstration Project” and “2018 Manufacturing and Internet Integration Development Pilot Demonstration Project” by the State Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
In November 2020, Robam Appliances realized the comprehensive transformation and upgrade of its intelligent manufacturing base, with digitalization, networking and intelligent transformation as the main line, promoted the application of 5G, cloud computing, AI and other technologies in the manufacturing industry, and invested a total of nearly 500 million yuan to build the industry’s first unmanned factory covering an area of about 50,000 square meters. In December that year, the unmanned factory of Robam Appliances was also selected as the first batch of “Future Factory” in Zhejiang Province, being the first home appliance enterprise selected.
Fig 2. Mr. Xia, vice-president of Robam Appliances
On the basis of the existing intelligent manufacturing, the future factory of Robam Appliances has achieved significant “cost reduction and efficiency” results: product quality has been improved to 99%, production efficiency has been increased by 45%, product development cycle has been shortened by 48%, production cost has been reduced by 21% and operating cost has been decreased by 15%.
From a leader in China’s kitchen appliance industry to a pioneer in the intelligent manufacturing of home appliances, Robam Appliances has not only explored a transformation and upgrading model suitable for the kitchen appliance industry, but also become a new benchmark for intelligent manufacturing in the industry. On this basis, the introduction of new concepts such as Robam Appliance’s Ninth-level Central Digital Platform, digital cooking chain and Zero-Point Manufacturing also marks a new stage in the development of its intelligent manufacturing.
At the press conference, Ge Hao, chief architect of the Ninth-Level Central Digital Platform of Robam Appliances, has given an in-depth explanation of this platform. Each “level” of the digital platform represents a component module of the digital construction of Robam Appliances.
Among them, the first-level construction for infrastructure, second-level construction for business standard, third-level construction for data standard and the forth-level construction for management digitization jointly build the “cornerstone” of the Ninth-level Central Digital Platform. Besides, the fifth-level construction for manufacturing digitization is mainly embodied in the digital manufacturing with future factories as its carrier. While the sixth-level digital construction of R&D, seventh-level digital construction of marketing, and the eighth-level digital intelligent construction altogether constitute a user-centered and data-driven digital cooking chain. As for the ninth-level construction, it represents the intelligent manufacturing vision of Robam, which is, to take users as the core, digital-driven business as the basis, to achieve zero distance between market and users, between R&D and users, between manufacturing and users, and finally to build Robam into a world-class, century-old enterprise that leads the change of culinary life.
At the press conference, Ye Danpeng, CMO of Robam Appliances, introduced the core link of the Ninth-Level Central Digital Platform — the digital cooking chain. According to his introduction, Robam Appliance launched the industry’s first intelligent cooking system ROKI as early as 2014, and also established the world’s largest database of Chinese cooking curves, which continues to lead the digital transformation of Chinese cooking style.
Fig 3. Mr. Ge, chief architect of the Ninth-Level Central Digital Platform of Robam Appliances
Fig 4. Mr. Ye, CMO of Robam Appliances
Robam Appliances’ digital cooking chain is centered on the Chinese cooking curve. Through recording, collecting, feeding back and precipitating massive data in the cooking scene, it forms rich user data tags to precisely guide product planning, product development, precise marketing, precise service and precise manufacturing, thus realizing zero distance between market and users, between R&D and users, and between manufacturing and users. The digital cooking chain is in line with the development logic and values of the digitalization of Robam Appliances. “Solving all kinds of difficulties encountered in the process of Chinese cooking with digitalization, so that the products can better empower cooking rather than replace it, and then stimulates culinary creativity.” Ye Danpeng said.
Achieving “zero distance” with the market, R&D and manufacturing is the vision of intelligent manufacturing of Robam Appliances, which also gives birth to the concept of “Zero-Point Manufacturing” of Robam Appliances. At the meeting, Cao Yanlong, professor of School of Mechanical Engineering of Zhejiang University and director of Shandong Institute of Technology of Zhejiang University, further elaborated the core content of “Zero-Point Manufacturing”.
The so-called zero-point manufacturing is to replace human intelligence with machine intelligence, so that enterprises can perform like human beings to achieve the automatic process of information acquisition, transmission, analysis, and ultimately making decisions and taking action. The core goal of Zero-Point Manufacturing is to realize zero-point manufacturing both in time and space.
In fact, the “Zero-Point Manufacturing” of Robam Appliances did not happen overnight, but it has experienced a transitional era of “lonesome equipment” of manufacturing 1.0, “digital equipment” of manufacturing 2.0, and “smart factory” of manufacturing 3.0. With the arrival of the “unmanned factory” 4.0 era, Robam Appliances has started to innovate its manufacturing management mode. Through the integration of new infrastructures such as industrial Internet, edge, data algorithm, etc. it will drive people and equipment with data as its core.
The global manufacturing industry is currently in change, and a new round of industrial revolution with intelligent manufacturing as the core is sweeping in. Different from the linear thinking logic of traditional manufacturing industry, digital upgrading can, on the one hand, take advantage of the enterprise’s own resources and a large amount of data, on the other hand, fully integrate data information from multiple circles such as users, supply chains, business partners, end consumers and so on, in a bid to provide strategic guidance for enterprise decision-making.
Fig 5. Mr. Cao , professor of School of Mechanical Engineering of Zhejiang University and director of Shandong Institute of Technology of Zhejiang University
Focusing on the Ninth-level Central Digital Platform and Zero-Point Manufacturing of Robam Appliances, the user is both the beginning and the end. Moreover, it is always with the user as its core that Robam Appliances is able to explore a new way to transform and upgrade the intelligent manufacturing of high-end kitchen appliances in China, so as to realize the corporate mission of “creating all the aspiration of human beings for kitchen life”.
