Xiaomi’s Second Smartphone Factory to be Completed by End of Year

On February 24, Wang Hua, General Manager of Xiaomi’s Public Relations Department, said that the main structure of the company’s second smartphone factory in Beijing has been completed, and the whole project will be completed by the end of this year. It is expected that all mobile phone production lines will be installed in the new factory by July 2024.

The factory in Changping District, Beijing, covers an area of 58,300 square meters, and has production lines including patches, board testing, assembly, machine testing and packaging. It is estimated to produce 10 million smartphones every year.

Xiaomi‘s first smartphone factory, located in Yizhuang in the southeast suburbs of Beijing, was completed at the end of 2019, covering an area of 18,600 square meters. Over 90% of intelligent equipment there was produced by Xiaomi itself. Xiaomi‘s first foldable mobile phone MIX Fold is produced there.

The Yizhuang Factory has the capacity of producing one million smartphones per year, which is 60% higher than that of traditional factories. It is also a “dark factory”, with a fully automatic production line inside. Without even turning on the lights, assembly, testing and packaging can be completed by robots.

Behind the dark factory is the most cutting-edge technologies, including AI, Internet of Things, edge computing, cloud computing, big data, 5G, etc. The integration of these technologies has improved the efficiency of the five core elements of a factory – production, equipment, logistics, energy and safety.

SEE ALSO: Xiaomi Founder Lei Jun Steps Down From Roles at Three Affiliated Firms

For example, thousands of components need to be mounted on the mainboard of a Xiaomi mobile phone. In the past, four or five workers needed to operate a machine that did the work. Now, the equipment can completely do the job itself. There are only 20 people in each shift in the board-making and testing workshop, but they are in charge of more than 200 pieces of intelligent equipment. Every day, over 4,000 MIX Fold 2 phones are rolled off the assembly line in the factory.

Yizhuang Factory also has a board measurement system, central dispatching platform, parallel software system and intelligent control center. In order to build this factory, Xiaomi has invested in 110 companies making intelligent equipment in the last three years.