Workers are seen at the production line of a dishwasher interconnected factory of Chongqing Haier Washing Electric Appliances Co. Ltd. in southwest China's Chongqing, September 25, 2022. (Photo/Xinhua)
Chongqing—On September 16, the World Economic Forum (WEF) announced 12 new members of its Global Lighthouse Network, which has six sites in China, underscoring the country's industrial strength. Haier Refrigerator Manufacturing Co., Ltd. in Chongqing has become the second enterprise in the city to receive this prestigious recognition.
Launched in 2018, the Global Lighthouse Network highlights the world's leading industrial sites that have achieved exceptional performance in productivity, supply chain resilience, customer centricity, sustainability, and talent. This global community of influential innovators, deploying over 1,000 solutions in multiple industries, includes 201 sites. The network now spans over 30 countries and 35 sectors.
Previously, Midea's Chongqing Chiller Factory has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as the world’s first AI-empowered lighthouse factory in the chiller industry, featuring smart manufacturing and green transformation, according to the company's website.
"Haier's Chongqing facility was selected as the world's first Talent Lighthouse," said a representative from the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology. This distinction recognizes production sites for achieving a transformative impact on the workforce through advanced solutions in work design and safety, talent planning, attraction and onboarding, development, and effectiveness.
Facing high mobility and productivity improvement bottlenecks in the younger generation of workers, Haier Chongqing adopted the proprietary RenDanHeYi model, shifting from a management-oriented to a service-oriented organization. The site deployed 35 4IR talent-empowerment solutions, including personalized promotion pathways, a point-based innovation incentive platform, and team-level smart workforce planning using multi-time-series forecasting. According to the WEF, these efforts reduced attrition by 40% and raised participation to 61%.
A Haier's Chongqing facility representative stated that the plant is transitioning from a one-way model of human-led decisions supported by AI to a two-way model of human–machine co-decision making. Leveraging the capabilities of Haier's COSMOPlat Tianzhi industrial AI model, the facility has launched an AI-powered maintenance assistant that provides intelligent fault detection and diagnostics. The initiative has increased equipment repair efficiency by 75% and reduced new employee training time by 50%.