Haier

Haier, one of the largest Home Appliances & Consumer electronics brand globally and world’s no.1 brand in refrigeration, has announced two core business strategies for the year 2015.

1. ‘The online factories’, will allow a mass customization of production by empowering Internet-connected consumers to control the manufacturing process in intelligent factories to develop products according to their desired specifications.

2.E-commerce in transit, will also place more power in the hands of consumers by providing on-demand and as-needed logistics services that integrate sales, distribution, installation and after-sales services into a two-way communication with the consumer

These strategic goals are aligned with future visions set out in Industry 4.0, which will form additional aspects for Haier to broaden the network strategy which was set out in 2012 to transform from a manufacturing company to a platform enterprise. This will help to make the full use of the Internet to provide large-scale product customization. Also through harnessing the added value of the Internet and mobile applications, Haier will continue to upgrade its industrial structure. The reduction in the number of intermediate links within its production and services processes will enable to meet the increasing demands for the best user experience and will allow customers to control and tailor the business to meet their needs.

Zhang Ruimin, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Haier Group, stated: "Haier’s online factories model is a disruptive innovation to the existing home appliance industry but, the trend of the age must be the pursuit of such change. In the Internet age, it is no longer about considering how to make customers understand and accept what we are doing. Instead, it is about integrating users and enterprises together in a harmonious and organic way. The most important characteristic of the Internet age is establishing zero-distance. It generates with customers, and the decentralization and distributed nature of the relationship. Enterprises must adapt by integrating with customers to provide the very best user experience.”

Haier has already built its first ‘no light required workshop’ as well as the first ‘online factory’ in the Chinese marketplace. Earlier the Qingdao’s drum washing machine production line was staffed with 92 workers but today robots have replaced all the employees and are directly connected to the entire production line. Furthermore, just one production line at Haier’s refrigerator factory in Shenyang can now support more than 500 different types of large-scale customization. Haier will continue such smart factory upgrading in 2015.

Being a leading home appliances manufacturer globally, Haier is also a major player in China’s e-commerce logistics sector, covering 400 cities and 1,800 counties, operating in accordance with its service commitment to deliver all orders within 24 hours or deliver for free. Haier E-Commerce has already undertaken the logistics services for 90% of large items ordered from Alibaba’s T-Mall website. This occupies approximately half of all Chinese B-2-C online product sales, followed by a strategic agreement with Alibaba that Haier entered in 2013. As part of its ‘e-commerce in transit’ business development strategy for 2015, Haier will implement its ‘person-van-shop-warehouse’ vision. By integrating resources from offline retailers, service providers and warehouses, Haier aims to guarantee efficient last-mile product delivery by removing the handovers between sales, distribution, installation and after-sales service providers by enabling the online user to experience integrated access to control all the resources in the chain in accordance with their specific requirements.

（Source:Business Wire )