Today, lets take a look at how Yifei automation, a typical representative of industrial robots, has grown and what we have learned from it over the past four years. Yifei automation is mainly engaged in the R & D and manufacturing of industrial robots, with nearly 100 national patented technologies. It is one of the largest parallel robot enterprises in China and one of the few Chinese robot ontology brand companies that have entered the supplier list of the worlds top 500 enterprises.


Through the growth of Yifei automation, we will explore:
 
How adaptable are industrial robots in Chinas industrial environment?
 
Why does Chinas manufacturing industry need robots to upgrade? How to upgrade?
 
Through cooperation with benchmarking customers, how to complete the large-scale expansion of the same industry after creating finalized and standardized products around the needs? How to solve the problem of profitability?
 
Before entering the text, lets share the three most valuable conclusions we learned from investing in Yifei automation:
 
For the landing application of industrial robots, the most important thing is to find benchmark customers in benchmark industries.
 
Chinas manufacturing industry has undergone many changes and evolution from process to demand. In order to seize the opportunity, the most important thing is to capture the demand and form industrial automation solutions according to local conditions.
 
In order to achieve great development, it is difficult for Chinas industrial robot enterprises to only sell a certain technical standard part. At the same time, relying only on integration and hardware will also become a business model with low gross profit and poor cash flow. We must combine algorithms, including AI, software and control to realize a more evolved new automation scheme with the combination of software and hardware to improve gross profit.
 
Where is the biggest opportunity for industrial robot entrepreneurship in China?
 
The report "global robot 2019" recently released by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) predicts that the annual growth rate of global industrial robots can be maintained at about 12% from 2020 to 2022. The top five industrial robot markets account for 74% of the global installed capacity, namely China, Japan, the United States, South Korea and Germany. China remains the worlds largest industrial robot market, accounting for 36% of the installed capacity of the global market.
 
But in the worlds largest industrial robot market, has Chinas industrial manufacturing industry reached the stage of comprehensive upgrading with robots?
 
We have discussed the history and present of Chinas manufacturing industry in the article "reading the changes and opportunities of Chinas industrial chain in one picture". When combined with the field of industrial robots, it is very interesting. Over the past 40 years, China has formed the largest, longest and relatively complete industrial chain, and in many links and parts of this industrial chain, China has become the first in the world.
 
While "expanding", our industrial structure is also "adding value": in addition to undertaking increasingly difficult precision processing, made in China has also added more and more technologies, software and other services on the basis of high value-added processing.
 
Chinas industrialization is characterized by its large scale, which is not only the soil of industrial automation, but also an opportunity - if the technology is verified and standardized in a large-scale place, it will have the opportunity to be popularized all over the world.
 
In the past few years, Chinese science and technology enterprises have done a lot to improve the added value of technology and embed the nails in the industrial chain, namely key technologies, into the industrial chain. An important prerequisite for the hope of innovation and entrepreneurship around the grand strategy of "localization of core technology" is that we are closer to the mature industrial chain, so we can respond quickly and realize the iteration and evolution of technology before our competitors.
 
Originally, the application of parallel robot in China was later than that in the United States, Europe and other markets, but no market in the world has such a large manufacturing scale as China. The population size of each single line is large and dense, which means that whenever Chinese science and technology enterprises capture new needs in an industry and form solutions into standardized products, they have the opportunity to dilute R & D costs through large-scale replication of the industry, so as to achieve the goal of improving gross profit and obtaining cost-effective advantages.
 
The eight years of experience from the founding of Yifei to the present can also answer this question again.


When the intellectual property rights of the robot ontology have become open, the next question becomes whether it can provide enterprise customers with a cost performance that exceeds that of human labor.
 
A company that can successfully win customers should have two characteristics: first, it has excellent technical strength. Second, it can start from the education market to do service and customization, find out those scenes that have not used robots, and convince customers that industrial robots should or can be used in this scene instead of artificial robots.
 
These two characteristics are the biggest difficulties and opportunities for industrial robot start-ups in China.
 
At the beginning of entrepreneurship, in 2012, Yifei gradually established the entrepreneurial direction of parallel robots. At that time, there were not many parallel robots in the Chinese market. Yili and Mengniu took the lead in introducing parallel robots into the production line. They used parallel robots to pack milk.
 
Industrial robots can be divided into series robots and parallel robots. Compared with the field of series robot, parallel robot is an emerging field, and the competition is not so fierce. Series robots are highly standardized, the market has long been dominated by "four families" (FANUC in Japan, Yaskawa in Japan, abb in Switzerland and KUKA in Germany). The degree of customization of parallel robot is higher than that of series robot, and there were not many scenes of production and commercialization at that time. This has left a gap for the growth of start-ups and greatly raised the technology and service threshold for entrepreneurs to enter the market.
 
When Fengrui met Yifei in 2016, its business model was turning to non-standard and customized solutions based on parallel robot body. This is in line with our judgment on the market trend of industrial robots. We think this is a promising direction in China. In the same year and the following year, as Yifei broke through the application scenarios of major customers such as Donge donkey hide gelatin, Unilever and Lansi technology, we further verified our judgment.
 
However, at that time, we have seen that even in a long-term right direction, doing parallel robots is also a hard business. The scene needs education, the demand needs to be found out, and the accounting period is usually very long. Yifei has been groping in many industries and almost died because of the failure of a cooperation project of a small household appliance manufacturer.
 
Fortunately, Zhang Sai, founder of Yifei automation, showed strong will and determination, and he was full of enthusiasm for industrial automation. His past experience can basically prove that he is capable of doing this. Zhang Sai is from Jinan and is a post-80s generation. After graduating from Tsinghua University and studying for a masters degree at Columbia University, Zhang Sai served as a senior engineer and production director of Zhenxiong group, a listed company in Hong Kong. He has working experience in design, R & D and production management in listed companies. These and the network resources he has accumulated in his work have provided good support for the development of Yifei.


Capture new requirements and form solutions
 
Yifeis products first came out of the laboratory in July 2013. A machine was sent to Shandong Qidu pharmaceutical for trial.
 
Although the machine was not sold to Qidu pharmaceutical in the end, Yifei accumulated a lot of experience in one years commissioning, from which Yifeis third-generation products were born. In the subsequent industrial robot exhibition, this generation of products were successfully sold to another pharmaceutical company.
 
At this time, Yifei not only sold a robot, but what the pharmaceutical company really bought is a solution based on Parallel Robot - Yifei customized an overall station specially for infusion swing plate based on the needs of customers.
 
The project with a revenue of hundreds of thousands of spent more than half a year as the backbone of the company from mobilization to final acceptance.
 
After the completion of that project, in 2014, Yifei made a popular model: wet tissue capping machine.
 
▲ Yifei Automation Co., Ltd. will take the full-automatic wet towel cover sticking system equipment to participate in the 26th International Science and Technology Expo of household paper in 2019.
 
Few people will notice that in the past quite a long time, the plastic cover on the wet towel packaging was fixed on the packaging bag by manual gluing. This humble lid requires five workers to complete the gluing process. Yifei made this process into a special standardized product, and made the connecting conveyor belt, cover falling machine, labeling machine and glue spraying machine into a whole with a parallel robot, that is, the wet towel cover sticking machine.
 
The typical feature of the wet towel production industry is "small scattered". Small and medium-sized enterprises mainly produce products with high similarity. The wet towel gluing machine is equivalent to inventing a new demand and can be copied to the whole industry soon.
 
Due to the high geographical concentration of these wet tissue manufacturers, mainly in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian, a large number of wet tissue manufacturers soon took Yifei wet towel gluing machine as the standard of the production line. An industry has changed.
 
Although the price of each machine is only hundreds of thousands, a little makes a lot. Now the wet towel gluing machine can contribute tens of millions of sales to Yifei every year.
 
Infusion swing plate and wet towel adhesive cover are the scenes of two industrial robot applications from scratch. Before Yifei, no one told the manufacturers of these scenes that this is a thing that can replace labor with machines, and machines are more cost-effective than labor.
 
Starting from the wet towel capping machine, Yifei has found a direction to open up the market: looking for opportunities in industries where repetitive labor is concentrated. Because automation has a certain threshold, it has not been automated before, and the customized solution of parallel robot can solve the problem of threshold.
 
In the following time, Yifei has gone through some detours, but those things that have been done right have verified this conclusion again and again: Chinas manufacturing industry has undergone many changes and evolution from process to demand. Entrepreneurs need to be able to capture new needs and form solutions if they want to seize opportunities.
 
Advanced: find benchmarking customers in benchmarking industry
 
The consumer smartphone industry with the highest requirements and standards is the place where precision manufacturing customers are most concentrated in the world. It is a milestone for Yifei to break through large enterprises such as Donge donkey hide gelatin and Unilever, but winning the customers of glass panel manufacturers such as Lansi technology is the benchmark customer for Yifei to break through the benchmark industry.
 
At that time, the whole company used all its resources to contact lance technology, including investors, government relations, suppliers, private friends and so on. Finally, by letting Lansi technology fully understand the strength of Yifei, Yifei obtained an opportunity to try out the contract.
 
The trial opportunity is not the final formal contract. First of all, the technical calibration must be done. The customers requirements have been given, Yifei has given the technical scheme, and Lansis technical department has approved it. The prototype can be sent to the factory. After the prototype passes the commissioning and test, the formal contract can be really obtained.
 
Lansi technology is the customer with the highest requirements for product quality, product performance and product accuracy in the history of Yifei company.
 
Glass from a glass substrate to a glass panel on a mobile phone needs to go through at least 30 processes. A process feeding is one of the processes, and it is also the first trial order placed by Lansi technology to Yifei. The customers requirement is that the equipment is 2x2 m? Within the floor area of, the feeding speed of 2500 pieces of glass per hour can be reached, and scratches and dirt can not be generated on the glass.
 
In the process of sending the first prototype to the factory, Yifei almost lost the order.
 
Glass is an industry that Yifei has never entered before. Lansi technology previously used machines from Europe, America and Taiwan, but the prototype sent by Yifei is only a device with the required performance. The packaging is not specially treated and there is no dust removal equipment. For the manufacturing field of glass panel, which has high requirements for cleanliness, the first prototype of Yifei can be said to be unqualified.
 
This once again proves our previous conclusion: entrepreneurs have a very high threshold of technology and services to enter the market. Entrepreneurs who want to break through industry barriers need not only hardware equipment that can meet the performance requirements, but also overall solutions that combine software and hardware for specific industries.
 
Zhang Sai also concluded that this part of industry customization must be learned, and entrepreneurs should understand all the rules of the industry. Including traceless transmission of glass, traceless gripping of glass, FFU, dust-free treatment and even packaging methods are all required.
 
Yifei organized engineers to hold a meeting overnight to produce a new design in two days, complete the order production in three days, and send two new equipment to Lansi technologys factory in Changsha before the deadline given by the customer.
 
Lansi technology finally placed the first order for Yifei with 16 sets of equipment, amounting to millions. But half a year after the completion of the first order, Lansi technology placed another order to Yifei. This time, the amount was large, tens of millions.
 
From the difficult process of Yifei entering Lansi, entrepreneurship in Chinas industrial robot field requires founders:
 
It has a comprehensive technical background, so it can provide a new solution combining software and hardware;
 
We also need to have a good sales and service spirit, because when we break through the core customers, we need to cooperate well with the chief engineer, factory director, people on the production line and all other roles, provide good service, and have a good mentality;
 
We should also have a certain degree of market sensitivity to create and find new needs and solutions suitable for Chinas manufacturing industry.
 
In addition to the parallel robot, the equipment customized by Yifei for Lansi also includes glass conveyor belt, glass gripping device, dust removal equipment FFU, frame, etc., which constitute a so-called functional equipment called machine table. The degree of customization is high, and the outer packaging of the equipment is also specially customized.
 
That order is a key step for Yifei to break through the benchmark customers, and it is also a stress test given by Lansi to Yifei. At the same time, there are many competitors competing for this order. In addition to performance, there are also considerations in terms of price, delivery time and other dimensions. Finally, Yifei won the majority, and the remaining competitors divided a small part of the order.
 
An extended small conclusion is that in many industries, startups have opportunities. One reason is that most customers dont want to be kidnapped by a supplier before forming a certain symbiotic relationship.
 
Now, after several years of cooperation, the cooperation between Yifei and Lansi technology has been very in-depth. Lansis factory has thousands of Yifei equipment, and Lansis sales also account for a large part of Yifeis annual sales.
 
It can be said that after breaking through the benchmarking application of the benchmarking industry, Yifei really gained a firm foothold in the industrial robot industry. Benchmarking industry and benchmarking application are indispensable: before taking Lansi, Yifei almost broke its capital chain due to the failure of a multi million dollar project of a small household appliance manufacturer, and has been trying non standardized solutions in many industries.
 
Gift of time: sufficient accumulation is also a kind of competitiveness
 
Where are the barriers to industrial robot entrepreneurship?
 
It can be summarized into two points:
 
First, the accumulation of core technology, robotics and core equipment;
 
Second: there should be enough accumulation in the process and know-how of this industry. The more we do, the more we accumulate, the easier it will be to do.
 
After becoming the core supplier of Lansi, it will be easier for Yifei to win other customers in the same industry, because people all know that this company supplies Lansi, and the object of Lansis service is apple. Double endorsement brings the trust and recognition of customers in the same industry.
 
In terms of sales strategy, Yifei takes the route of key customers and replicability. Or take Lansi technology as an exampleFor this large customer, the products provided by Yifei initially focused on parallel robots and related automation systems. Now, with the in-depth promotion of services, Yifei can also provide customers with related automation components such as SCARA, small six axes, modules and so on.
 
While meeting the all-round needs of key customers, these outputs can also be copied to the whole industry, just as the wet towel gluing machine was popularized from a wet towel factory to the wet towel manufacturer cluster in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian. From Lansi to BOE, Tianma, Foxconn and other glass panel manufacturers, Yifeis glass panel equipment can meet the needs of automatic production.
 
As we have discussed earlier, Chinas industrial robots should be implemented by finding benchmark industries and capturing new needs and forming solutions. The conclusion derived from these two points is that it is difficult for Chinas industrial robot enterprises to achieve great development only by selling a certain technical standard parts, We must provide a solution or integration solution, not just a simple product to meet the needs of customers.
 
Unilever is another milestone customer of Yifei.
 
Unilever has seven factories and three businesses in Greater China. One of them is daily chemical products familiar to consumers, such as shampoo and shower gel. The bottles of these products are produced by special factories. Before entering the filling procedure, the bottles need to be sorted manually one by one and stand on the assembly line before entering the filling machine for filling.
 
Yifei has designed a set of automation scheme for Unilever, which can automatically sort out the disordered empty bottles and enter the filling process by using parallel robot and 3D visual recognition technology.
 
This set of equipment is a demand found out of thin air in Unilever. After inspection, it has been applied to several Unilever factories in Greater China. If it is not for the shutdown of the epidemic, now this set of equipment has been promoted and applied in Unilever overseas factories.
 
This is also a case of evolving industrial automation solutions in combination with industry and local conditions. It is basically impossible to purchase standard parts for simple integration. In addition, it is difficult for entrepreneurs to form an advantageous business model in cost performance and cash flow only by integration and hardware. This requires entrepreneurs to combine algorithms to make a further new automation scheme with the combination of software and hardware, so as to improve the gross profit. At the same time, they use benchmark customers to create the finalized and standardized parts of products and realize the subsequent large-scale expansion of the same industry.
 
▲ automatic cartoning system developed by Yifei automation.
 
To sum up, only by winning the most difficult industry and the most demanding customers can the company seize the opportunity of industrial robot landing application. Lansi technology is one, and Unilever is also one. Before, it was a company that only used foreign products. If next, Yifei has more advantages in cost performance and service, the opportunity will be greater.
 
Flexibility and opportunities of Chinas manufacturing industry
 
At the beginning of this year, COVID-19 disrupted the rhythm of almost all industries.
 
At that time, there was a serious shortage of masks. In addition, many links of mask enterprises depended on manual operation by workers, resulting in a serious shortage of production capacity. Yifei automation also switched to the production of mask machines.
 
To some extent, it is a kind of "dimensionality reduction" for automated enterprises to turn to mask machines. At that time, like Yifei automation, many mask manufacturers were robot and automation enterprises such as tostar, Yinghe technology and Hans laser.
 
The flexibility of Chinas manufacturing industry is obvious: automation technology can expand its application. Under the background of rapid demand, an industry can quickly realize the transformation from labor-intensive to automatic production, improve efficiency and reduce labor costs.
 
At present and in the future, Yifeis top priority is to constantly broaden the scene. In Zhang Sais view, the epidemic is also good for industrial automation, and more enterprises realize that automation is an inevitable trend. He summarized three characteristics of enterprises with strong willingness to automate:
 
First, the scale of their industry market is large;
 
Second, the order volume of the enterprise itself is large and relatively stable;
 
Third, the enterprise employs more people, and the production line does not need to be changed frequently.
 
Even if willing, a prerequisite for industrial automation is that it can be done and realized. Take an industry with strong willingness to automate, but it is difficult to realize at present - shoes and clothing. The main reason is that the flexibility of shoes and clothes is too strong, and the current automation technology is difficult to grasp, locate and sew the cloth. Once there is a breakthrough in technology, there is still a market. The industry itself has a large market scale, labor-intensive and many repetitive labor. You know, in a factory, there are usually thousands of people doing sewing.
 
As long as it can be done and realized, within the scope of acceptable cost, if machines can complete tasks more efficiently than people and save costs, industrial automation will become the choice of most business owners.
 
In addition, after tasting the sweetness of automation, it is difficult for enterprises to return to the state of using manual labor. One of the simplest reasons is that the workshop designed for automation equipment does not necessarily leave enough space for workers activities. Next, the technology will be updated. The factory will probably choose to update the automation equipment rather than dismantle the equipment and let the workers enter the site.
 
Look back, the mask machine is a short-term event, but Yifei also found potential customers who can cooperate with it in parallel robot business.
 
With the resumption of work and production of Yifeis upstream enterprises, Yifeis main business rebounded. They soon returned to the main business line and left the market with "frequent chaos but extremely tempting cash flow". (welcome to click the link to see Yifeis experience in making a mask machine.)
 
This year, during and after the epidemic, Yifei achieved large-scale growth in revenue and profit year-on-year by relying on its own innovation and efforts. Yifeis new industrial park is also under construction. They plan to continuously expand the scale and strive for listing within two to three years. Look forward to seeing it in the capital market.


Summary of this article
 
1. As the worlds largest manufacturing country, China has caught up with the policy of scientific and technological innovation, coupled with the development of artificial intelligence technology. The artificial scale of the original manufacturing industry is large. We believe that China will eventually produce world-class industrial automation Enterprises - which is an excellent soil for industrial automation.
 
2. Chinas manufacturing industry has undergone many changes and evolution from process to demand. Entrepreneurs need to be able to capture new needs and form solutions to seize opportunities.
 
3. The entrepreneurial experience of Yifei automation, a typical representative in the field of industrial robots, shows that entrepreneurs must combine algorithms to realize a further new automation scheme with the combination of software and hardware, so as to improve gross profit, use benchmark customers to create the finalized and standardized parts of demand and products, and realize the subsequent large-scale expansion of the same industry.
 
4. Entrepreneurship in the field of industrial robots in China requires founders: they have a comprehensive technical background, so they can provide new solutions combining software and hardware; We also need to have a good sales and service spirit, because when we break through the core customers, we need to cooperate with the chief engineer, factory director, people on the production line and other roles to provide good service, the mentality can go up and down, can bend and stretch; We should also have a certain degree of market sensitivity to create and find new needs and solutions suitable for Chinas manufacturing industry.