Scientific research capacity
R&D Investment
Midea sticks to the R&D investment strategy of "being demand-oriented, maintaining efficiency, and combination of short and long-term investment", and increases its R&D investment year by year, which is not less than 3% of the Group's sales per annum.
Scientific Research Organization
The Central Research Institute was established in 2008 to concentrate on proactive technical research. Midea's postdoctoral research workstation has won the honorary title "Excellent Postdoctoral Workstation of China". Today, Midea has 3 laboratories accredit by the state - Refrigeration Technology Analytical and Testing Center, Home Appliance Certification and Testing Center, and Motor Testing Center. Midea owns 3 production-study-research bases, which are the Common Embedded Software Technology Platform of Guangdong Province, Microwave Energy Applied Research Center and Tsinghua University, and is provided with a full range of home appliance R&D capabilities.
2007, the technical center of Midea Group ranked second among technical centers of home appliance manufacturers accredited by the state.
Information Building
Midea Group's information applications have covered the whole process from product development management (CPD/PDM), supply chain management (SCM), manufacturing (ERP/MRPII), operations management (OM), financial management (FM) to customer relationship management (CRM), creating a continuous information flow, improving R&D efficiency by 30%, and shortening the R&D cycle by 20%.
Strategic Alliance
In 2007, Midea organized the first province-ministry production-study-research strategic alliance of white goods of Guangdong Province in alliance with 12 white goods backbone enterprises, 12 ministry-affiliated universities and scientific research institutes. In 2008, Midea founded the province-ministry production-study-research strategic alliance for lead-free electronic manufacturing together with Beijing Institute of Technology, etc.
International Cooperation
For a higher level of development, Midea has entered into strategic cooperation in core home appliance technology with transnational corporations to catch up with and overtake advanced international standards. Since the 1990s, Midea has conducted extensive technical cooperation with worldwide leaders, such as Sanyo, Panasonic, Toshiba and Shibaura in Japan, Merloni Progetti in Italy and NAIS in Korea, improving Midea's technical strength greatly. Midea has established strategic partnership at the technical level with industry giants like Carrier, Toshiba-Carrier, Emerson, etc. Presently, in-depth technical cooperation projects between Midea and other Fortune 500 enterprises are in progress.
Core Achievements
Intellectual property rights: By December 2007, Midea had applied for 3,620 patents.it is now applying for 3 patents aday on average, and has become a national example in patent certification.
Standard setting: Midea has established a shared technical standard data platform (national/industrial standards) covering all products of this Group in cooperation with specialized standard information agencies. This platform contains over 20,000 national, industrial standards, and 570 international standards. Midea has led the drafting of the national standard for water dispenser, the international standard for microwave oven and the IGRS standard for white goods, and specializes in the research of network control application and industrialization of white goods.
Industry Honors
In 1999, Midea was chosen as one of the first patent pilot enterprises by the state.
In 2004, Midea was chosen as one of the first "advantaged enterprises in intellectual property rights of Guangdong Province".
In 2005 and 2006, Midea won the special prize of scientific and technological progress of Guangdong Province.
In 2007, Midea became one of the second state-level innovation-oriented pilot enterprises, and one of the first exemplary enterprises in intellectual property rights of Guangdong Province.
