Global Lighthouse Network 2025

Intelligent product introduction tools to accelerate product development cycles3.1 With an increasing focus on customized products and shorter times between introductions, speed to market is a crucial metric for many Lighthouses. They have achieved step-change improvements in the design-verify-prototype-test cycle. More recently, they have been deploying advanced solutions against each step – including recommendation engines for material or process parameters, advanced simulation models for product performance and customer market and data intelligence capabilities to forecast demand. What differentiates today’s Lighthouses is their ability to integrate solutions across the product development lifecycle. The core capability, therefore, is not any one of the solutions, but rather the product lifecycle data platforms that integrate and make accessible customer, supplier, product and process data for simulation and forecasting of new products. Midea in China exemplifies this mindset. Their product lifecycle management platform has enabled digital tools at each step in the product development process, enabling a full design-verify-prototype-produce cycle to be completed digitally before bidding on new products or investing in any assets. This has the dual effect of improving response times to new orders enabling more opportunities to bid, with higher “first time right” designs and higher fidelity cost estimations improving competitiveness by reducing the cost buffers previously baked into bids (see Figure 15).51 Midea drives rapid product development by creating full design feedback loops FIGURE 15 Design Verify-45% Product design lead time -10p.p. Steel plate loss rate-71% Defect rate-81% Configuration lead time Make Prototype & testOne-click intelligent configuration and quotation Multi-physics simulation based on configuration data platform to model configurations for customized customer orders and one-click quotation optimized for costIntelligent design for manufacturability platform Extracts design parameters from historical visual design drawings and identifies ones for rapid re-use, then uses adaptive algorithms to generate optimal pipe routing designsCore capabilities Midea’s core capability is their in-house developed product lifecycle platform (PLM), which enables them to leverage simulation throughout each step in the design cycleAuto-generate electronic SOPs (standard operating procedures) for custom designs 3D simulation generates electronic SOPs aligned to custom designs’ process and quality requirements, with animations and AI error-proofing used to guide operators through assembly steps in AR glassesIntelligent steel plate nesting solutions system Supercomputing-enabled system sorts, rotates and arranges for-nesting parts based on drawings, generating the optimal material specs with highest steel utilization, and auto-dispatches purchase orders to best-fit suppliers Source: Global Lighthouse Network.EXAMPLE Midea Global Lighthouse Network: The Mindset Shifts Driving Impact and Scale in Digital Transformation 26