Haier： quality leads to create a world-class enterprise.

Quality standards should be defined by users.

Haier: quality leads to create a world-class enterprise.

□ Our reporter Zhu Wenda

As a representative of the real economy, Haier has entered more than 200 countries and regions around the world, and has been ranked among the top 10 "Top 50 Global Brands in China" by Google & Kaidu for seven consecutive years. If China enterprises are facing the world to create a shining business card of China quality, then Haier is one of the best practitioners and leaders.

Haier pioneered a quality management system with the best user experience as the core. Haier believes that quality standards should be defined by users, inspection is not the standard, and customer satisfaction is the standard. Therefore, quality should pay attention not only to performance standards, but also to user experience. Haier’s quality management system has triggered a learning trend of cross-industry, cross-field and cross-cultural enterprises, which has made the world see the innovative development of quality management in China and provided the world with a "China plan" for quality management.

Initiate-

China’s quality management model leads the Internet of Things era.

In the development of human society, every innovation in the field of quality has promoted the progress of production technology and the improvement of residents’ quality of life. Looking back at the history of global quality management, we have to mention some famous quality management methods, such as Total Quality Management and Six Sigma: the popularization and application of Total Quality Management has made Japanese products synonymous with high quality in the world; After the success of General Electric, Six Sigma went to the world.

Haier team took part in the presentation of the basic quality innovation project of China Electronic Quality Association and China Light Industry Federation.

Since the reform and opening up, China has actively studied advanced quality management theories and methods from Japan, the United States, Europe and other countries, and applied them to enterprise practice, which has promoted the improvement of product quality in China. Entering the Internet of Things era, the business environment is constantly changing, and the rapid economic development in China provides the soil for the birth of quality management mode in China.

Haier pioneered a quality management system with the best user experience as the core.

First, how should quality be defined? Haier believes that quality standards should be defined by users, inspection is not the standard, and customer satisfaction is the standard. Therefore, quality should pay attention not only to performance standards, but also to user experience.

The traditional quality system includes the whole process of R&D, manufacturing, production and service, which is linear. But Haier’s quality system is different. Haier takes users as the center, makes users become producers and consumers, participates in R&D, design and manufacturing in the whole process, and builds a continuously evolving experience cloud platform to provide users with new experiences of diversified scenes, personalized customization and lifelong iteration.

For example, before 2016, there will be at least 10 cm gap between refrigerators and cabinets in users’ homes around the world. In 2016, casarte, a high-end brand of Haier Group, reduced the distance from 10 cm to 2 cm. However, Chinese consumers are still not satisfied, because the refrigerator and home are still not perfectly integrated, and it is easy to accumulate dust in the gap and inconvenient to take care of. This is also a problem that the industry has been unable to solve for many years, because the door of the ordinary refrigerator can not be opened after being embedded at zero distance, and the two sides can not effectively dissipate heat, which will bring great security risks. Focusing on users’ needs, casarte R&D personnel eliminated the last 2 cm in five years. On the one hand, they sorted out 4 major technical topics and 45 sub-topics, and set up a technical team of nearly 100 people in 7 major professional directions, which lasted more than 20,000 hours to create an original scientific and technological refrigeration system; On the other hand, after dozens of iterations, they innovatively introduced the design scheme of the second rotating shaft, and finally designed and developed the original technology of double-axis track-changing hinge, which realized that the refrigerator can be flush with the cabinet and connected with the lines.

Secondly, Haier endowed the quality system with higher standards and connotations, namely "high-quality products, high-quality systems and high-quality people".

High-quality products should have two characteristics: first, high reliability, which is the basis of quality; The second is high brand loyalty.

The high-quality system not only opens up the whole process from R&D and design, module procurement to intelligent manufacturing, intelligent service and quality guarantee period within the enterprise, but also covers the ecological stakeholders of all nodes such as suppliers, distributors and service providers, and realizes the high quality of the whole process, all nodes and all cycles.

High-quality talents are not only the foundation of the quality system, but also the continuation and guarantee of the system. In Haier, it is necessary to establish a high-quality workforce and a corporate culture that respects users. It is necessary to instill the corporate culture in the hearts of every employee, so that the craftsman spirit can be turned into corporate genes and integrated into the DNA of the enterprise.

Relying on the leading quality management concept and practice, Haier won the first China Quality Award in 2013. In addition, Haier has won many domestic and international awards, including the national quality benchmark, the quality technology award, and the "Olympic" (ICQCC project) gold award in the quality industry, and has become one of the enterprises with the largest number of such awards in the industry.

Subversion-

Digital intelligence drives life cycle quality guidance.

Economic development and technological innovation promote the continuous innovation of quality management system and methods. In order to keep pace with the times, enterprises must focus on improving the quality management level, especially to conform to the new round of scientific and technological revolution and the general trend of industrial transformation, accelerate the construction of digital and intelligent quality control mode, and realize the digital upgrade of quality management.

Haier exerts its strength from the practice of innovative quality management, and drives the innovation of quality management with digitalization and intelligence. First of all, in terms of equipment as the production base, Haier built an intelligent equipment self-optimization system based on digital twin technology, and built an IOT platform for equipment. Through the collection of key parameters and real-time interconnection of parameters, it can monitor equipment, process and production operation parameters at any time, diagnose and deal with abnormal data found in time, and turn the original fault maintenance into predictive maintenance beforehand. Secondly, in terms of technology, Haier has built a process design platform integrating R&D and manufacturing, providing a digital, traceable, reusable data base for lean manufacturing and intelligent operation.

Technological innovation is an important part of digital and intelligent innovation quality management. Haier carries out innovation around three key points: first, automation technology innovation, extensive application of intelligent cooperative robots and logistics automation technology, and creation of intelligent man-machine cooperation working environment; Secondly, detection technology innovation, Haier has carried out all-factor and process verification experiments in the application of visual detection technology and performance intelligent detection station of sound quality intelligent detection system; Third, the new ICT technology innovation, the whole industry has opened up hundreds of application scenarios of the integration of information technology and manufacturing technology, such as 5G+ machine vision, 5G+AR, 5G+AI+MEC, and formed standardized and modular products that can be quickly copied. At present, it has successfully empowered 20 world-leading interconnected factories, helped 4 factories pass the level 4 certification of intelligent manufacturing maturity, 2 factories were awarded the intelligent manufacturing benchmark, and 6 factories were awarded the "lighthouse factory" in the world.

Intelligent+5G Interconnected Factory Based on Haier COSMOPlat Mass Customization Mode

In terms of test and inspection equipment support, Haier has the first-class testing capability in the home appliance industry and the international leading 700+ professional laboratory, covering 50,000+testing projects in the field of whole machine and module testing, and has been recognized by many international authoritative testing institutions such as CNAS, VDE, JET, UL and TüV, and obtained mutual recognition of data. At the same time, Haier has the first "Industrial Product Quality Control and Technical Evaluation Laboratory" awarded by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China.

Haier did not stop at the digital technological innovation of quality management, but also exported the "Haier Scheme" for the high-quality experience of users and the high-quality development of the industry by transforming the achievements of quality technological innovation into patents. For example, in the process of breaking through the needs of users, Haier has applied for 17 patents, including 6 invention patents, such as intelligent detection and isolation technology of communication faults in control panels, which has solved the quality management problems that have plagued the industry for many years.

Pilotage-

Help the high-quality development of China’s real economy

The fourth industrial revolution is subverting almost all industries. At present, a new generation of information technologies, such as Internet of Things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and big data, are deeply integrated, breaking the boundaries between the digital world and the physical world. At the moment when Chinese-style modernization is fully promoted, promoting the high-quality development of the real economy with digitalization has become a "required question" for enterprises.

Based on nearly 40 years’ manufacturing experience, Haier initiated the COSMOPlat industrial Internet platform in kaos in 2017, which takes mass customization as the core and introduces users’ full-process participation experience. While empowering Haier to transform itself from a "digital enterprise" to a "digital enterprise", it also empowers more enterprises and industries to achieve high-quality development.

On the enterprise side, Compass is an RV manufacturer in Rongcheng, Shandong Province, and was selected as the second batch of state-level specialized and innovative "Little Giant" enterprises. Aiming at the pain points of the original products, such as homogenization, high cost, long cycle and weak R&D ability, kaos COSMOPlat has provided transformation consulting, lean transformation and mass customization mode transformation schemes to help it link ecological resources and change its business model, which has reduced its procurement cost by 7.3%, shortened its delivery cycle by 43%, increased its revenue by nearly five times and achieved rapid growth in profits. Empowered by COSMOPlat of kaos, Compass has changed from a small and medium-sized enterprise that originally worked as an OEM for Australian RV dealers to an eco-operator of RV travel.

Kaos Industrial Internet

On the industry side, kaos COSMOPlat promotes the digital transformation of the whole industrial chain, realizing the transformation from a "walled garden" to an endless "tropical rainforest", and promoting the deep integration, quality improvement and efficiency improvement of the whole industry. Taking the ceramic industry as an example, COSMOPlat of kaos cooperated with Jingdezhen of Jiangxi to build a digital platform for ceramic industry to serve the development of the industry and enterprise transformation. At present, the platform has been put into operation, attracting tens of thousands of industrial service providers, more than 300 ceramic masters and more than 3,000 upstream and downstream enterprises in the national ceramic industry chain.

Electromagnetic compatibility detection of household appliances

On the urban side, COSMOPlat of kaos initiated the "1+N+X" model of industrial internet empowering urban digital economy, that is, to build a comprehensive service platform for city-level industrial internet enterprises, N industrial internet platforms in specific industries and fields and X industrial internet demonstration parks. Taking Qingdao as an example, by the end of 2022, the platform had empowered 4,500 enterprises and added an output value of 30 billion yuan.

As the first batch of enterprises in China to explore intelligent manufacturing, Haier has always taken the initiative to explore and innovate, driven the digital transformation and upgrading of enterprises with platform empowerment, released innovative kinetic energy for the industry with scientific and technological innovation, created a win-win situation with all ecological parties, and helped the high-quality development of the national digital economy. In 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the first batch of national-level "digital navigation" demonstration lists, and Haier ranked first among 30 enterprises and became the benchmark of digital navigation.

Universality—

Quality management in China has changed from "bringing in" to "going out"

In the late 1970s, total quality management was introduced into China and gradually took root. In the early 1990s, China introduced the ISO9000 quality management series standard certification mechanism, which promoted the systematization and standardization of enterprise quality management and brought it into line with international standards.

Total quality management emphasizes that quality is produced rather than tested, and the final quality is guaranteed by quality management in production. Six Sigma is a management tool based on data to analyze the improvement of on-site ability, which can be interpreted as 3~4 mistakes in every one million opportunities. What they have in common is that they are based on the internal production process of the enterprise.

China is not only a big manufacturing country, but also a big consumption country. With the continuous growth of consumer demand, the integration of production and consumption has become a major feature of China manufacturing. On the basis of the introduction and implementation of total quality management and Six Sigma management, Haier explores a high-quality management system with the integration of production and consumption and "quality for all", and forms a quality management model with China characteristics. China’s quality management has also experienced the process from "bringing in" to "going out".

Haier’s quality management model has aroused the learning and reference of cross-industry, cross-field and cross-cultural enterprises, not only domestic leading automobile enterprises and dairy enterprises, but also representatives from countries along the Belt and Road such as Spain, Serbia and Israel. Quality Progress, an international authoritative journal, published "Consolidating Intelligent Interconnected Quality System and Improving User’s Product Experience" to deeply understand Haier’s quality strength and let the world see the new development of quality management in China.

Quality development is the way of rejuvenating the country and the strategy of strengthening the country. Through continuous innovation and practice, enterprises in China, represented by Haier, are pushing to make attaching importance to quality and creating quality a social trend, making the pursuit of Excellence and advocating first-class a value orientation, and finally realizing the transformation from China manufacturing to China creation, from China speed to China quality, and from China products to China brand, thus contributing to the world the excellent quality management mode from China.

China Quality Newspaper [Special Issue of China Quality (Chengdu) Conference]