With the disappearance of demographic dividend and cost rising of material and others,the home furniture manufacturers and hotel furniture manufacturers are forced to improve the level of automated production.Machine Substitution has become the hot topic in the Pear River delta.

Government Push intelligence production to furniture manufacturers

According to the International Federation of Robotics,the quantity of Chinese robots increased rapidly in the recent years:in 2013,Robots accounted for one fifth worldwide,in 2015,China had 68 thousands of robots,accounting for one fourth and in 2016,the quantity exceeded Japan,ranking No.1 worldwide.

The quantity of robots increases year by year is the outcome of the manufacturing’s efforts to seek upgrading and transformation.The publish of China Manufacturing of 2025,the guidance of Ministry of State Industry and Information for intelligent manufacture and the support for intelligent industry from the local governments reveal the expectation of transition from big manufacture to strong manufacture.

In the Pearl River delta where there are intensive furniture enterprises including home furniture manufacturers and hotel furniture manufacturers,intelligent manufacture has become one of the highlights of local governments.In Guangzhou,the government proposed by 2020,80% of the manufacturers would apply industrial robots and intelligent equipment.In Foshan,the government subsidies the robot enterprises.At present, there are more than 300 intelligent equipment manufacturers above the designated scale.Some famous enterprises such as Lixunda,Jiateng,Yixuesong and other famous enterprises emerges.In Dongguan,,the government No.1 document strongly pushes the plan ’Intelligent Manufacturing’,promoting the automation updating of ‘Robot Substitution’

Automation Rate Reaches up to 60 in some hotel furniture manfacturers

Under the pressure of rising cost and the powerful guidance of the governments ,quite a few furniture manufacturers stand in the first echelon of intelligent manufacture.

In the workshop of Zhaosheng Furniture,the cutting, painting and packing are all done by robots which are the main roles.The industrial automation rate has exceeds 60%.In the painting process producing volatile gas resulting in occupational diseases,Zhaosheng Furniture is the first to introduce the technique of MDF electrostatic and invested 10 million RMB to substitute labor with robots,which made ‘Zero Volatilization ,Zero Formaldehyde,Zero Pollution’ become reality.

The effect of ‘Robot Substitution’ is amazing.Zhaosheng Furniture with construction area of 150 thousand square meters and annual output value of more than one hundred million RMB need only 200 workers.Labor cost accounts for 25 percent of the total cost.’Robot Substitution’ reduces the labor intensity and improves the production chains making the workers turnover rate drop to 7%.Also the high efficiency also makes this home furniture factory bear big development potential.According to the plan, the biggest production capacity can reach more than 300 million RMB.

Difficult For All Furniture Maker,Especially for Custom Hotel Furniture Manufacturers

However,not all furniture manufacturers can do same as Zhaosheng Furniture.To most of the medium and small size traditional furniture manufacturers ,especially for hotel furniture manufacturers and custom home furniture manufacturers whose products are all different according to customers’ drawing.

According to the ‘The Research Report For Efficiency Analysis of Shunde Furniture Enterprises’,Among the enterprises with annual amount from 50 million RMB to 100 million RMB,80 percent of them are willing to invest more on production equipment to improve the production efficiency.The smaller size the enterprises are ,the smaller desire to invest to update the production equipment.In terms of the production type, most of the enterprises who adopt automation or half automation equipment are board furniture or office furniture production enterprises.The insider points out that profit of furniture production is not high so the enterprises are hard to have enough money for updating the equipment and purchasing the expensive automation production line.In addition, there are so many furniture categories including panel furniture,upholstery furniture,solid wood furniture and hardware furniture.Each of them has different technique and processes.Each product involves tens of process,thus it is impossible for all of them to adopt automation assembly line.

During the landing process of Robot Substitution,generally furniture enterprises suffer the lack money and technique and other problems.Robot operation is not so flexible and the control of manufacturing schedule should be improved.Also owing to the high maintenance cost,quite a few production line are abandoned because the expected efficiency is not realized.