Zhang Xiaoyi Of The United States: Delving Into The Transformation Of Digital Intelligence And Exploring The New Possibilities Of 5G And Industrial Internet

In the 5g era, what new opportunities and challenges will Midea Group, which is deepening the transformation of digital intelligence?

On September 27, Zhang Xiaoyi, vice president of Midea Group, CIO and President of IOT business division, shared the latest progress of Midea's digital intelligence transformation at the "2020 China Intelligent Manufacturing Industry Annual Conference" sponsored by 21st century economic report.

He said that Midea Group began to transform as early as the end of 2012. At present, Midea Group has successfully transformed from a single category and a single domestic operation to a multi category, global operation technology group, and formed four major sectors, including consumer electronics, HVAC, robotics and automation systems and digital business.

"Midea's digital transformation is to use digital drive, while intellectualization is mainly to transform our products, from selling hardware and mainly focusing on home appliances, to driving hardware with software, plus content and services." Zhang Xiaoyi concluded.

In this year's home appliance industry was seriously impacted by the epidemic, Midea still showed strong resilience in the first half of the year. According to the financial report, Midea Group's revenue in the first half of the year was 139.067 billion yuan, with a net profit of 13.928 billion yuan, ranking first among the three major white power groups.

Data driven transformation

According to Zhang Xiaoyi, this year Midea will further deepen the strategy of "comprehensive digitalization and comprehensive intelligence" on the basis of three major strategies. "We are now building" understand your Smart Life ". It is not just to make a link or add a wireless module, but to carry out in-depth intelligent transformation of product functions through scene research."

He cited Midea's intelligent recipe as an example. Unlike ordinary recipes, it contains the chef's experience and the results of long-term laboratory research. By integrating healthy nutrition into the cooking curve, it can drive rice cookers and frying robots with one button to complete the whole cooking process.

It is worth mentioning that in the construction of the digital platform, Midea has transformed the previous results and document management system into a process based system. Basically, the business front of each link is driven by data. Zhang Xiaoyi said that next, Midea's industrial Internet will further extend to equipment, logistics and other links, and continue to deepen the digital and intelligent transformation.

In his opinion, there are actually two beauties in operation, "one is the beauty of the physical world, and the other is the beauty of the digital world. The beauty of the digital world finds the optimal solution after applying the virtual model calculation, and then feeds back to the real beauty."

New possibilities under 5g

Industrial Internet not only needs to connect all kinds of industrial equipment on the production site, but also needs to process a large number of data in real time. Zhou Xiaoling, it director of Midea Group, once told the 21st century economic report that there are three major pain points and challenges in the current industrial Internet: large network investment and difficult layout adjustment; small upload bandwidth and slow transmission processing; poor mass connection and high control delay.

However, these problems are expected to be completely solved in 5g environment, and Midea is exploring new possibilities on this basis.

According to Zhang Xiaoyi, Midea's industrial Internet has five main characteristics. First of all, self-developed industrial software has gradually shifted from private cloud deployment to public cloud deployment, and export enabling enterprises to the outside world. It is reported that, in addition to the financial module of ERP, all other software has been replaced by self-developed module, and some functional software has also broken through the industry barriers and the monopoly of international large factories.

Secondly, m.iot under the new infrastructure, that is, the deep integration of digitization and robotics and automation. Zhang Xiaoyi believes that its biggest application is to realize the whole process flexibility and manufacturing flexibility. For example, at present, Midea can use big data to determine industrial parameters in the R & D stage, and transmit instructions to the group's equipment and manipulator through edge calculation. Each equipment can produce different air conditioners to achieve intelligent deep integration.

On the combination of 5g and industrial Internet, it is reported that Midea has established strategic cooperation with the three major domestic operators and Huawei, and has established 11 5g + laboratories. "Due to the application of 5g, it used to take four to five networks to lay out the industrial Internet. Now, with slicing technology and security technology, it only needs to lay a network, and the manipulator can also complete instructions through mobile devices." Zhang Xiaoyi said.

Finally, Zhang also mentioned the wide application of AI and the application of digital twins. According to reports, on Midea's industrial Internet, self calculation, self-learning, visual and auditory detection of industrial parameters are also widely used in factories.