【customer story】Yizumi IMM at WeKing Daily Appliances

Amid the upgrading of consumer experiences, lifestyle appliances are also on the upgrade, becoming increasingly diversified. Due to its powerful blending functionality, the high-speed blender has become more and more popular in the market in recent years.

The main function of a high-speed blender is grinding and crushing. It integrates the functions of a juicer, soybean milk machine, ice cream machine, cooking machine, grinder, etc., achieving many functions within one machine. It is claimed to be a new kitchen artifact. With the increasing popularity of the high-speed blender, small domestic household appliance enterprises have successively begun to focus on this new market opportunity.

Guangdong WeKing Group Co., Ltd., one of the largest rice cooker manufacturers in China, produces many products spanning several fields, such as voltage cooker, induction cooker, electric kettle, vegetable and fruit blender, refrigerator and so on. It owns a subsidiary, Foshan WeKing Daily Appliances Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “WeKing Daily Appliances”). It is mainly engaged in daily appliances, kitchen appliances and refrigeration equipment. It integrates and brings together the production, research and marketing functions. Its factory has an area of about 6,000 square meters. In recent years, he has made hefty investments in the high-speed blenders and juicers, capturing the medium and high-end markets. WeKing’s sales last year reached 300 million RMB. Its clients include renowned brands such as Midea, Xiaomi, Yunmi, Instant (U.S.) and so on.

High-end molding without any black spots and gas lines

To accelerate the capturing of a bigger market share in high-speed blenders and juicers, WeKing reinforced its independent research and development efforts last year. On top of that, it expanded its product development team and invested nearly 10 million RMB in the development of molds. At the same time, it invested more than 20 million RMB to expand its production capacity, improve its injection molding workshops, introduce dozens of Yizumi injection molding machines, and adopt automatic feeding, robots, double-layer pipeline transmission auxiliary operations, achieving an isolated management model between human and machine.

For the high-speed blenders and juicers, a better appearance will sometimes be more important than its functions. As a result, the molding of the external parts has become even more important than ever.

Liao Junhua, Factory Manager of WeKing reiterated: “This type of product has a very high requirement on its finishing. A tiny little flaw will affect the delivery of the whole batches of products.”

The main external parts of a high-speed blender and juicer are the transparent cup, exterior shell and main body of the feeding barrel. In particular for the transparent cup, even a tiny little black spot can be seen on the surface. To attain a better surface, WeKing uses high-price imported materials coupled with a full utilization of SKⅡ series general-purpose precision injection molding machine. After good operating for half a year, the passing rate of the equipment is above 98 percent. There are also no defects such as black spots, gas lines, scratches, burrs etc. on the molded transparent and high-gloss external parts.

“We are operating our production 24 hours a day for 28 days a month. And our material costs are very high. We may not demand a very rapid cycle time, but we need the machines to be highly stable in order to ensure quality outputs. Since the beginning of the introduction of Yizumi injection molding machines last year, their performances are highly stable and they have maintained a high passing rate, ensuring the punctuality of the delivery dates of the products,” Liao said.

Yizumi Industrial Internet Platform enables online monitoring 24/7

In March 2019, in order to raise productivity, WeKing Daily Appliances further collaborated with Yizumi, achieving wireless network connection for all injection equipment. As a result, the production data can be uploaded instantly. For Mr. Liao Junhua, he can check on the real-time status, output and equipment alarm and so on through the Yizumi Industrial Internet Platform App or computer terminal without having to be stuck in the workshop monitoring 24 hours.

Liao Junhua cited that it is of paramount importance to the future development of WeKing Daily Appliances: “The high-speed blenders and juicers have huge potential for growth. The orders for the first quarter of 2019 apparently surged. There is a possibility for the company to reach revenue of 600 million RMB. The production capacity must also be doubled. However, it is increasingly harder to recruit staff as the labor costs are skyrocketing. The online workshop management can raise the equipment utilization rate and productivity.

It is worth noted that WeKing is still planning to build cleanrooms with advanced layout of equipment networking, boosting unmanned management in cleanroom environment.