【113】Visible production lines: Let customers check the progress of their orders at any time

【113】Visible production lines: Let customers check the progress of their orders at any time

At 3 p.m. this afternoon, the purchasing manager of Xiaomi Smart Home suddenly logged into our customer data platform and pulled up all six of the orders he was responsible for for review. Ten minutes later, he sent a message: "I see that the chassis of my vacuum cleaner robot is currently being produced on Machine 5. The current yield rate is 99.8%, and it is expected to be completed by noon tomorrow. Additionally, there is a slight fluctuation in the temperature curve of the mold in the 47th cycle. The system has automatically compensated for it - your transparency has allowed me to sleep soundly at night."

This "sleeping soundly" experience was almost unimaginable two years ago. At that time, our biggest pain point was that the actual situation on the production line was difficult to be transmitted in real time. Salespeople could only rely on phone calls to ask the workshop, and the workshop would then go to the team, and the information would be distorted layer by layer. Once, we even had an embarrassing situation: We told the customer that the product had been shipped, but in fact, that batch of goods was detained in the warehouse for re-inspection due to potential quality issues discovered during the inspection.

"Why not open the production line to customers?" The new IT director proposed a seemingly crazy suggestion. We began the transformation of the transparent factory. The first step was to install high-definition cameras in all key processes, allowing customers to view the flow of their products on the production line in real time; the second step was to develop an order tracking system, with each product tray having an RFID tag, and the system would update the location information in real time; the third step was to establish an automatic push mechanism for abnormal events, and any event that affected delivery would be notified to the customer immediately.

The first month of the system's launch was a complete disaster. Customers, like discovering a new toy, stared at the production line 24 hours a day. Some called at midnight: "I see Machine 3 is stopped. Is my order in trouble?" - In fact, that was the normal mold change time. Some requested to view the production footage from thirty days ago, wanting to confirm whether the cooling time of a certain batch of products met the standards. The customer service team almost collapsed, but at the same time, they collected a large number of improvement suggestions.

The most unexpected thing was that this transparency forced our internal management. Previously, when the production line encountered small problems, the team leader might choose to "digest internally". Now, every move can be seen by the customer, which forced every link to be standardized and standardized. The production efficiency increased by 18% in three months because everyone knew that any delay would be directly exposed to the customer.

Now， our customer platform has over 300 enterprise accounts logging in every day to check the status of their orders. Some customers even connect our real-time production data to their own ERP systems to achieve second-level collaboration in the supply chain. A German customer said: "From my office in Stuttgart, I can see the production line in Dongguan. This gives me more peace of mind than any quality certificate."

This story is about the establishment of trust. When the production line is no longer a black box, and when every parameter and every step is transparent and visible, the sense of security that "my product is being treated seriously" becomes a more valuable competitive advantage than price. In manufacturing, perhaps the most precious thing is not such advanced technology, but the courage to lay everything bare in the sunlight.

Your order is being carefully guarded by engineers on the other side of the world - the Golden Eagle transparent factory makes trust within reach.