Some time ago, NIO and Midea officially announced their cooperation in building cars.
Many people are curious, how did Midea, which started by making electric fans, get involved in making cars?
An important reason is that Midea's KUKA robots are widely used in automotive production lines.
Midea has become a giant standing behind Tesla and BYD.
Today, we will talk about the story of Midea and Kuka.
The use of robots in automotive production lines is nothing new.
As early as 1971, KUKA, founded in Germany in 1898, brought robots into the assembly line and built the first robot-run welding line in Europe for Daimler-Benz.
The application of robots can help car manufacturers improve production efficiency, quality and safety, reduce costs and energy consumption.
In the era of new energy vehicles, producers rely more on robots.
Because new energy vehicles pay more attention to flexible production methods, they often need to assemble different models and different configurations on the same production line to meet the personalized needs of consumers.
This puts forward high requirements for model identification, parts logistics, assembly process, production tool switching, etc.
The robot has strong perception, decision-making and execution capabilities, and can independently navigate, accurately position, grasp and handle according to production needs, realizing efficient and intelligent control of the production line, so it has become an indispensable intelligent assistant on the automobile production line.
In 2014, Tesla adopted KUKA robots on a large scale on the Model S electric vehicle production line.
In 2017, Tesla applied KUKA robots to the battery pack production line of Model X and Tesla electric vehicles.
At Tesla's factory in Shanghai alone, 600 KUKA robots are involved in the work.
A KUKA robot on Tesla's production line
From the stamping line, to the body center, to the assembly center, KUKA robots are all present.
KUKA is also a strategic partner of BYD, providing the latter with comprehensive automation solutions.
With the assistance of KUKA, BYD has realized the mixed-line production of multiple models at many domestic bases.
Based on its contribution to intelligence and digital transformation, KUKA won BYD's 2023 "Best Partner" award.
A KUKA robot on the production line of BYD's Hefei plant
At present, KUKA is an important supplier of domestic and foreign car companies, and has reached cooperation with Ford, BYD, Tesla, CATL, NIO, etc.
In fact, in the automotive production workshop, in addition to welding, painting, and assembly, KUKA robots can also take on the role of handling.
In GAC Aion's No. 2 Intelligent Manufacturing Center, KUKA provided a number of intelligent logistics system solutions based on the KMP 1500i+K-MReS software platform of multiple latent jacking AMR mobile robots, which realized unmanned line-side handling, met the needs of the factory's fast-paced beat, greatly improved production efficiency and docking accuracy, and laid a solid foundation for the realization of the overall intelligent logistics project of Aion's No. 2 Intelligent Manufacturing Center.
KUKA AMR mobile robots
With more than 100 years of experience in the field of intelligent automation, KUKA offers one-stop solutions for entire automated production lines and intelligent logistics systems, in addition to individual machines.
In overseas markets, KUKA has led the construction of complete production lines for German automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volkswagen, and in the Chinese market, KUKA also provides whole plant automation solutions for NIO and Tesla.
KUKA has become the "key man" in the field of global automobile manufacturing.
Some time ago, Midea Group disclosed its 2023 annual report, with operating income of 372.037 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 8.18%, and net profit of 33.72 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.1%, setting the best operating performance in history.
Among them, the robot and automation segment achieved revenue of about 31.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 12%.
Today's KUKA not only helps Midea become a giant standing behind car companies, but also becomes an important engine driving Midea's business growth.
Seven years ago, when Midea began to acquire Kuka, it was not favored by everyone.
KUKA is a German star enterprise with a history of 126 years and is included in the "four families" of industrial robots.
At that time, Midea had already ranked among the world's top 500 companies, and its revenue was 10 times that of KUKA, which was strong enough to support the acquisition.
Midea KUKA Intelligent Manufacturing Science and Technology Park
The Bureau noted that after the completion of the acquisition, Kuka's business was not all smooth sailing.
In 2017, KUKA generated revenues of 3.479 billion euros.
Since then, it has been declining year after year, falling to 2.574 billion euros in 2020.
KUKA's revenue from 2017 to 2022
turned from profit to loss, which made the argument of Midea's business failure after the acquisition of Kuka once very loud.
After surviving the epidemic and running in, KUKA's revenue began to stabilize and recover.
In 2023, KUKA achieved sales of 4,054 million euros, the best in its history.
Midea also successfully completed the full acquisition of Kuka and privatized it.
This cross-border acquisition case has finally come to fruition.
Now, if we look back at this acquisition from an "afterthought" perspective, we will find that Midea's success is not accidental.
First, beauty is not for the layman.
As early as 2015, Midea established two robot companies in a joint venture with Yaskawa Electric, one of the "four families" of industrial robots.
In 2016, Midea also spent 178 million yuan to invest in a robot manufacturing company called Efort.
It can be seen that before the acquisition of KUKA, Midea has actively deployed industrial robots, not on a whim, but has done its homework.
Second, Midea itself needs robots.
Since 2012, Midea has put robots into large-scale use to improve the level of intelligent manufacturing.
For Midea, in line with the idea of "buying is better than building", the acquisition of KUKA is also reasonable.
Third, Midea is optimistic about China's industrial robot market.
As the world's factory, China is vigorously promoting the intelligent, digital transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, which means that the industrial robot market has huge development potential.
The trend of China's industrial robot sales from 2014 to 2023
Data show that since 2017, the average annual growth rate of China's industrial robot market has exceeded 10%.
Midea is optimistic about China's industrial robot market and is full of confidence in the acquisition of KUKA.
This acquisition is a win-win situation for KUKA and Midea.
For KUKA, it not only improves the competitiveness of its products, but also opens up the Chinese market and feeds back the global market.
The cost advantage of the Chinese supply chain helps KUKA to develop cost-effective products.
The addition of the Chinese R&D team has greatly improved the efficiency of KUKA's headquarters in Germany, which can shorten the development cycle of a new robot from 24 months to 15 months.
Joining the Midea family, KUKA took the opportunity to open up China, the world's largest industrial robot market.
The rapid growth of the Chinese market led to the growth of KUKA's performance.
According to the data, KUKA China's revenue contribution increased from 15.0% in 2020 to more than 22% in 2023.
More importantly, KUKA has broken through the bottleneck of the original automotive industry and entered the electronic information, consumer goods, logistics and other industries, and achieved business diversification.
Recently, China and overseas have also strengthened cooperation, including overseas projects, product manufacturing, etc., China has begun to feed back overseas business, with significant cost performance and fast delivery capacity to give full play to the advantages of China's large-scale manufacturing, to empower overseas business, improve global competitiveness.
Midea and KUKA launched a telemedicine robot
For Midea, it has created a second growth curve.
Like Gree, Haier, TCL and other home appliance companies, Midea is not only strengthening the traditional home appliance business, but also thinking about how to transform.
At the beginning of 2015, the growth rate of the traditional home appliance market has slowed down significantly, and the home appliance industry has gradually entered the era of stock competition.
It was also in this year that Midea decided to lay out industrial robots, and then started the acquisition of KUKA.
In terms of revenue, in 2023, Midea's robotics and automation business segments with KUKA as the core and other manufacturing industries will achieve revenue of 37.2 billion yuan.
Although it only accounts for about 10% of the total operating income of the United States, it has a strong momentum of nearly 25% year-on-year.
The composition of Midea's operating income in 2023
In addition to the advantage of quantity, the correct solution pays more attention to qualitative empowerment.
As mentioned above, Midea itself is already making extensive use of robots.
By the end of 2023, the density of Midea's robots has reached 570 units per 10,000 people.
Within Midea, KUKA can collaborate with other businesses such as home appliances, parts, and logistics to further enhance Midea's intelligent manufacturing capabilities.
In recent times, everyone has been focusing on new quality productivity.
KUKA is Midea's new quality productivity.
It should be noted that the new quality productivity emphasizes the quality, not the format.
Taking traditional agriculture and light industry as examples, as long as new technologies can be introduced and innovative combinations of production factors can be carried out, new quality productive forces can also be formed.
It can be said that industrial robots are not only the representative of new productivity, but also the catalyst of new productivity.
In this sense, Midea's acquisition of Kuka is a big game of chess.
In addition to betting on industrial robots, Midea is also facing the transformation of To B, and also has a layout in industrial technology, building technology and digital innovation.
For example, in the field of chips, Midea will mass-produce and launch 14 chips in 2023, with a total sales volume of more than 30 million.
For another example, in the field of new energy vehicles, Midea has laid out three product lines of vehicle-grade thermal management, electric drive system, and chassis execution system, with shipments reaching 750,000 units in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 400%.
In the future, the giant behind this car company is expected to become a giant behind the manufacturing industry.