The 80,000-square-meter (860,000-square-foot) facility, located in Changping District on the northeastern outskirts of Beijing, follows the company’s pilot smart factory in Yizhuang, which produces about 1 million units of the company’s Mix Fold smartphone annually.
“We have 11 production lines,” Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun says in the short video embedded below. “100% of our core processes are automated. We’ve developed the entire production and manufacturing software to achieve this.”
The new factory will produce Xiaomi’s next foldable phones, the MIX Fold 4 and MIX Flip, which are set to be released later this month. They will be produced at a rate of about one every three seconds, 24 hours a day.
According to GizmoChinaMaintaining a perfectly clean manufacturing environment with micron-level dust removal – which explains why the few people working in the smart factory’s ‘operations room’ in the second video below wear surgical-style gowns and caps.
Of course, fully automated, “silent” factories have been around for quite some time. For example, Japanese robotics company Fanuc Ltd. opened its first fully automated line in 2001. CNN MoneyIn 2003, there was a factory near Mount Fuji where robots were producing about 50 robots a day, running completely unsupervised for up to a month at a time.
But Xiaomi went one step further by letting the factory’s AI brain autonomously develop and optimize processes over time.
“What’s most impressive,” says Ray Jun, “is that this platform can identify and solve problems, while also helping us improve our production processes. It’s really amazing! When our colleagues first saw this platform, they were really amazed.”
Step into our factory’s heart, the “War Room”. Xiaomi Hyper IMP (Intelligent Manufacturing Platform) is the brain of our operations, preemptively solving problems and optimizing production.😎 pic.twitter.com/6ZWhOm5wle
— Rayjun (@leijun) July 9, 2024
A Weibo post elaborates on this, with one section roughly translated as follows: “The 100% self-developed ‘Xiaomi Fengpai Intelligent Manufacturing Platform’ is the brain of the factory, injecting soul into the factory, allowing the entire factory to have self-awareness, self-decision-making and self-execution capabilities, independently diagnose equipment problems, improve process flow, and realize full-scenario digital management from raw materials procurement to delivery, making it a true smart factory that can evolve on its own.”
It’s truly amazing and a taste of what’s to come for the world.
Source: Lei Jun
