Mengniu’s goal of implementing smart construction is to increase production efficiency by 20%, shorten product development cycle by 30%, reduce operating costs by 20%, reduce defective product rate by 20%, and increase energy utilization by 10%. The terminal share has increased by 10%, and each box of milk can be intelligent and digitized from the pasture to the factory, the distribution link, to the terminal store, and consumers. At present, some of the indicators have been exceeded.

"Smart Pasture": From "Prairie Cattle" to "Digital Cattle"

At the Winter Davos Forum in January 2020, Mengniu Group CEO Lu Minfang said, "There are 170 megabytes of data behind a box of Mengniu milk."
In June last year, Alibaba Cloud and Mengniu reached a strategic cooperation to start the "digital milk source" and create Mengniu's smart ranch system. Thanks to the technological empowerment of Alibaba Cloud, Mengniu took the lead in realizing the digital milk source in the dairy industry. Now the Mengniu Smart Ranch system can provide a "cloud steward" and "cloud doctor" for 1 million dairy cows in more than 800 ranch: according to the different estrus cycle of each cow, the ranch classifies them in a refined group. , Automatic feeding of feeds with different nutritional combinations, so that the output of the pasture can be accurately predicted. This is the value of digital intelligence.
From pasture milk (Grass) to glass (Glass), an accurate understanding of the source cow is the first step. At present, with the assistance of smart collars, various data of cows are automatically uploaded and analyzed. In some advanced pastures, Mengniu cows have pedometers. According to the number of steps they take each day, they can judge their health, the estrus cycle, etc., so as to help accurately grasp the menstrual cycle of each cow.

Nowadays, when cows stand on the milking table, the smart ranch system can record their milk production. The IoT subnet equipment is Mengniu’s "nervous end", and the smart production scheduling solution provided by Alibaba Cloud, It will be Mengniu's digital brain, helping to realize the transition from "grassland cattle" to "digital cattle". The "digital cattle" also let managers know who is the celebrity cattle.
Mengniu's production process is divided into five steps: milk collection, milk storage volume, pretreatment, filling and packaging and storage.
First of all, there is automatic integration in the milk collection, such as the management of the information of the milk cart through RFID technology, and the monitoring of the whole process of the milk cart from the factory to the factory;
In the milk storage constant volume link, system integration will be carried out to control the constant volume information, such as time, warehousing volume, etc. will be recorded;
The pre-processing link is the process of producing semi-finished products. The information during the production process is automatically collected. At the same time, the error-proofing system is used to monitor whether there are errors in the material feeding. Every time the material is fed, the correct information must be scanned and the door will be opened. Take out the material;
The filling link is the automatic integration of information for the filling equipment, and at the same time realizes the error prevention of the filling code. By monitoring the code to check whether it is consistent or fuzzy with the actual code information, an automatic alarm is issued;
The last is the packaging link, which is integrated with an automated integrated warehouse to automatically transfer information such as finished products, inventory, and batches that have been produced.
For Mengniu, the significance of these data is very significant:
First of all, Mengniu learns about the health of the cows through the Internet of Things equipment. When the cow is in poor condition, its milk will not be used as raw milk, which is the first pass at the source;
Secondly, accurate milk production data can be used for big data modeling to predict the milk production of the pasture to ensure the stability of the raw milk supply; the real-time data makes real-time prediction a reality, customized by Alibaba Cloud With smart production scheduling solutions, Mengniu can iterate production scheduling plans in real time to make fresh milk fresher and effectively improve production efficiency.

Smart Supply Chain: Connecting the upstream and downstream ecosystems, quickly responding to the black swan incident

If the smart pasture is the supply side, then the smart supply chain is to control supply and demand in the entire chain, and to match and plan.
As a key link in Mengniu's digital transformation, Mengniu Smart Supply Chain has started operations in the first quarter of 2019. Mengniu and Alibaba Cloud have opened up business, information, and capital flows in the upstream and downstream of the supply chain through cloud computing, big data and other technologies. , Logistics end-to-end collaboration has formed a complete industry chain information platform that runs through breeding, procurement, production, warehousing, sales, distribution, and terminals.

Through the "digital drive + operational capability" service model, Mengniu's smart supply chain platform has empowered more than 5,000 partners in the upstream and downstream ecosystems to achieve synergy between production and sales. Mengniu provides data for the overall planning and allocation of raw milk through real-time viewing of the country’s milk collection, moving from an information island to the interconnection of the industrial chain.
In the new crown epidemic, the value of the smart supply chain has also been maximized. During the epidemic, raw milk on the supply side did not decrease, but factories on the demand side might not be able to start operations, causing oversupply. If the raw milk is rejected at this time, there are only two ways to kill the cow or pour the milk on the ranch. Although the factory has stopped production, the original purchases cannot be stopped. This is Mengniu's responsibility.
At the same time, raw milk is a perishable raw material, so it is necessary to test the purchased raw milk immediately and distribute it to different regions and different production lines in different factories to produce different milk products according to the composition ratio and production requirements. During the epidemic, factories in some cities were completely shut down, so the new plan must be used to deliver raw milk to specific factories in the shortest path. It can be said that this is a race against time, and in the smart supply chain With the support, Mengniu responded well to the black swan incident of supply and demand.
In addition, the smart supply chain can also help Mengniu understand the overall cost and achieve cost reduction and efficiency enhancement. In the information age, the cost seen is a single link. One link can transfer some costs to other links, thereby reducing the cost of this link. In the smart supply chain system, you can see the overall cost and achieve effective Reduce land consumption and increase efficiency.

Four "online": advancing digital transformation

Behind the smart ranch and smart supply chain are Mengniu's four online strategies, namely "channel online", "consumer online", "supply chain online" and "management online".
The essence of channel online is full transparency of data, occupying channels and increasing sales; after achieving online consumers, Mengniu will be able to understand their true demands and adopt different reach and marketing strategies for different groups of people and demands. The supply chain is online The purpose of modernization is to deal with fluctuations between supply and demand, to achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement of the entire link, and to achieve efficient and fast management with the help of online management.
For Mengniu's management, how to quickly transmit information among 45,000 employees has always been a pain point. The emergence of DingTalk has solved all this and realized online management. In March last year, Mengniu realized the full introduction of the organization. At present, Mengniu has dedicated DingTalk to help sales at the frontline, processing orders from front-line shopping guides, and delivering instructions.
As a result, employees scattered in various regions can continue to do their best in a "virtual working environment". Internal work is non-stop, new processes are set up at any time, and even recruitment and offers can be made with ease. Through DingTalk's functions such as video conferencing, live broadcasting, training, sharing schedules, and online document editing, Mengniu’s employees have been able to "rest without stopping work".

Fighting against the new crown epidemic: dual-center strategy drives digital and intelligent transformation

Digital intelligence itself is a top-level project. The leadership leads the business transformation, the efficient execution of the business team and IT team, coupled with sufficient budget and talents, these are the key factors in the transformation of digital intelligence, true digital intelligence It itself is based on business transformation, so Mengniu's digital intelligence is a dual middle station strategy, that is, data middle station and business middle station.
The business center is equivalent to a "microservice", which essentially accumulates business experience and flexibly responds to business changes. It can be said that the business center is an operating and collaborative system; while the data center integrates multi-source heterogeneous data from various channels , Through algorithms and models, provide forecasts and early warnings for the running business, which is essentially a command and decision system.
This year's new crown epidemic has strengthened Mengniu's determination to promote the "Double Middle Taiwan" strategy. As a dairy giant, Mengniu takes offline channels as its core and essentially achieves to C through to B. During the new crown epidemic, the business of supermarkets and supermarkets has shrunk, while e-commerce and home-to-home businesses have grown rapidly. At this time, if the offline inventory cannot be accurately grasped, it may happen that after consumers place an order, the product cannot be purchased The problem of store delivery has caused uncontrollable logistics costs.
The essence of the business center is the precise matching of online and offline omni-channel orders and inventory. Through the synergy of upstream and downstream, the realization of "a game of chess across the country and channel passthrough" is realized, and then different brand reach and marketing are carried out according to the new changes of consumers Promote and promote the full explosion of online home services.