Gree Electric Appliances Wuhan Co has been making strong efforts to boost its production capacity through various methods, such as its updating intelligent production equipment and optimizing production processes, according to the official WeChat account of the Wuhan Economic & Technological Development Zone (WHDZ).
Wuhan Gree is a key manufacturing enterprise based in the WHDZ, located in Wuhan city in Central China's Hubei province. Last year it produced 5.82 million domestic air conditioners, achieving an output value of 11 billion yuan ($1.56 billion).
Hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, Wuhan Gree stopped production for two months earlier in the year.
The factory resumed work and production on March 14. From April 5, its machinery and equipment was running 24 hours a day, with more than 5,000 employees on duty and a resumption of double-shift production.
By the end of April, the company's capacity utilization rate had increased to 100 percent, with 17,000 air conditioners being produced per day.
After the resumption of work, the company invested more than 20 million yuan to upgrade the intelligent workshop of the control factory -- and it has gradually automated, digitalized and intelligently transformed the production process of the air conditioner control plant to achieve intelligence in production.
According to company officials, after the upgrade, the control plant's intelligent production line reduced the number of workers by 50 to 80, improved its efficiency by more than 15 percent and reduced inventories of stocks of semi-finished raw materials from 72 hours to 48 hours.
This year, the company will invest another 25 million yuan and will also fully convert to intelligent production, which the company said will bring direct economic benefits of more than 12 million yuan to the factory every year.
