China: Midea Rolls Out AI Solutions for Overseas Expansions

Chinese electrical appliance manufacturer Midea Group has launched what it calls an "Agentic Factory Overseas Expansion Solution" that aims to quash challenges to Chinese growth overseas. 

The solution, which implements AI technology across a range of key challenges to Chinese enterprises expanding abroad, has been tested at Midea's own factory in Thailand, where its finished product defect rate has been reduced by 50%.

Midea's solution includes cross-cultural employee training to deal with language and cultural barriers and cross-border supply chain traceability, which Midea identified as a key problem to Chinese enterprise expansion overseas. 

Midea’s solution to growth challenges

Midea's field-validated solution aims to deal with persistent challenges to Chinese enterprise expansion overseas. 

The Chinese manufacturer says its AI powered solution has been validated at Midea’s Thailand Refrigeration Plant, where it implemented 72 AI applications and 13 major agents across 25 scenarios. 

Midea say as a result the factory reduced end-to-end order lead time by 43%, lowered customer complaint rates by 32% and shortened employee training and certification cycles by 62%. It claims the finished product defect rate has been reduced by 50% at the site.

The solution is bolstered through Midea's partner organisations such as Midea Cloud, KUKA Robotics, Annto, Hiconics, CLOU Electronics and Midea Building Technologies which further support its cost reduction and efficiency improvement through automated production, reusable packaging and integrated energy-saving solutions at its Thailand factory. 

Barriers to Chinese overseas expansion

Deloitte has argued that China is evolving from being the “world’s factory” to a global “innovation powerhouse”, emerging as a strategic cornerstone for multinational enterprises to reshape their global competitiveness.

In comments published on Deloitte's website, Senior Partner, Deloitte China, Patrick Tsang, JP says: "In recent years, Chinese enterprises have actively expanded internationally, leveraging strengths in innovation and manufacturing. Yet they continue to face challenges in strategy, operations and capability building.”

As China evolves, Midea is improving key areas that have been outlined as barriers across Chinese enterprise expansion overseas. The company has identified the biggest challenges to enterprise expansion as long-distance cross-border supply chains, inconsistent quality standards across export markets and multinational workforce management difficulties caused by differences in language, culture and labour regulations.

Solving key issues with AI

For improving supply chain resilience, Midea says it developed a cross-border supply chain AI agent that monitors 35 core nodes in real time.

The company cited positive results: reducing exception-handling response time from 48 hours to within 12 hours and keeping raw material on-time arrival rates above 96%.

In workforce training, Midea introduced an AIGC + VR multilingual training system, reducing new employee training from eight days to three days.

Across quality control, Midea launched a “voice of the customer to voice of the process" seven-step quality solution powered by an expert knowledge base of more than 12 million quality-related cases, enabling customer complaints to be traced to production lines and root causes within seconds.

Midea’s washing machine factory in Jingzhou

Midea is building on the transformation of its Jingzhou washing machine factory, which received the world's first WRCA Agentic Factory certification in August 2025.

According to industry group GSMA, in Jingzhou, Hubei Province, China, Midea’s washing machine factory uses 5G to deliver a fully interconnected manufacturing process where a washing machine rolls off the factory line every 15 seconds. 

It was built by China Mobile and Huawei to enable advanced logistics, automated robotics, real-time production line monitoring and quality checks using AI, according to GSMA, who wrote a case study on the production site. 

Partner programme and global results

Midea has also introduced the Midea Go-Global Partner Program. According to Simon Zhang, Vice President and Chief Digital Officer of Midea Group, the program is not just about standardised equipment, but about turning Midea's accumulated experience into practical guidance and implementation support.

The company says its co-building model is already delivering results. Wuhan Honghai Technology completed its 2024 Thailand capacity expansion from infrastructure construction to production launch in five months with Midea's support.

Xiamen Hexing Packaging, an 18-year Midea partner, has expanded from a domestic supplier into a global partner, establishing factories in Southeast Asia and North America.