Recently, at the 30th Annual Supplier Awards ceremony held by General Motors, Minshi Group won the 2021 Outstanding Contribution (Overdrive) - Accelerated Innovation Award for its intelligent light-emitting grille, making it the first Chinese company to receive the award. This year is also the 24th year that Minshi Group has become a supplier of General Motors.
According to public information, the GM Overdrive Awards were established in 2012 to recognize suppliers who have made outstanding contributions in key aspects of global procurement and supply chain organizations, including sustainability, innovation, partnerships, total cost of business, excellence in R&D and safety.
"In the past 2021, we have experienced unprecedented challenges, including the spread of the global epidemic, semiconductor shortages, tight international logistics resources, and fluctuations in raw material costs, but in the end we have successfully met the delivery needs of our customers and successfully launched the research and development of a number of new projects." Wu Siyi, General Manager of MINSIL Group BU, said, "It is our continuous investment in innovation that has enabled us to receive this award. ”
Innovation, leading change
In August 2020, Cadillac officially released its first pure electric vehicle , Lyriq, whose front face subverting the concept of traditional car design and arrangement has aroused heated discussion and praise from people inside and outside the industry. Vertical slim LED lights through the integration of lights, radar compatible with the BLACK CRYSTAL black crystal obsidian grille and Cadillac in-line lightning lights, breaking the traditional car front face design and arrangement concept, while inheriting the brand's classic elements, presenting a futuristic new visual effect.
The front face design includes a luminous grille and luminous signage; Image source: Cadillac
Among them, the BLACK CRYSTAL obsidian grille is the world's first intelligent integrated luminous grille designed and developed by Minshi Group for General Motors.
As one of the world's largest suppliers of automotive exterior parts, Minshi Group has been listed in the top 100 global auto parts suppliers for many consecutive years, and in its own view, "integrity, mutual trust, teamwork and leading change" is the fundamental support for them to go to the international stage. "Innovation is the source of development, and innovation comes from a strong team, we believe that for a great team, nothing is impossible!" Wu Siyi said.
Looking back at the history of Minshi Group, it took only 10 years from the establishment of the group in 1992 to enter the field of passenger car exterior parts in 1999, and then to the successful entry into Ford's global procurement system and Nissan automobile supply chain system. However, how to stand out as a core partner in the supply chain system of multinational car companies will rely not only on manufacturing and product design capabilities, but also on the need for more core technologies to compete with the world's leading enterprises.
To this end, Minshi Group continued to increase its investment in the field of research and development, for the core material technology and process required for exterior trim parts to make breakthroughs one by one, and finally in 2016, with the high stability and gloss effect of corrosion-resistant anodizing treatment technology for aluminum trims, it won the BMW Group's "Quality" Field Innovation Award, and became the first Asia-Pacific enterprise to receive this honor.
At present, based on the changes in demand caused by the changes in the automobile industry, the product matrix of Minshi Group has also been extended from traditional exterior parts to battery boxes and chassis structural parts, and gradually realized the comprehensive and intelligent upgrading of exterior products.
And as far as the previous research information of Gaz Automobile is concerned, as of now, the full-time R&D personnel of Minshi Group have reached more than 2,200 people, and the proportion of R&D investment in the group's sales revenue has reached more than 6%, and it is expected to further increase to 10% in the future, so as to support Minshi Group to continue to maintain its first position in the future market competition by creating a deeply specialized "moat".
Make cars lighter, more beautiful and smarter
At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution represented by new energy, new materials, artificial intelligence, etc. is having a significant and far-reaching impact on global economic and social development, and the original product technology, industrial form, and business model are also undergoing major changes, which puts forward new requirements for automobiles from development, design to manufacturing, including automotive exterior parts.
Taking the function of luminescence as an example, in the context of automobile intelligence and electrification, the luminous exterior decoration based on the lamp is expected to become the core carrier of the output of the vehicle data flow, and realize the functional upgrade from "lighting" to "expression", such as welcome, courtesy to pedestrians, driving mode, power display and other functions.
By extension, through the integration of exterior parts and intelligent hardware to form an intelligent exterior system, so as to meet the intelligent needs of automatic driving, has become one of the main development trends of external accessories.
As mentioned above, based on the understanding of the development trend of automotive exterior parts, the research and development direction of Minshi Group in recent years is not only the lightweight and aesthetics of exterior accessories products, but also extends to the field of intelligence, through flexible visual imaging systems and traditional product processes and function improvement, escorting the development of automotive intelligence.
The research and development of Minshi Group for the front face is more than just luminous, its "Meet" series of products is covering intelligent luminous signage, intelligent luminous grille, intelligent bumper, integrated luminous, interactive, heating, cleaning and millimeter-wave radar, lidar, camera, infrared night vision and other functions as one of the intelligent front face solutions, can be applied to L4 or above automatic driving scenarios.
Minshi intelligent front face structure video; video source: Minshi Group
Based on continuous efforts in this field, Minshi Group has industry-leading patented technology and is one of the few technology providers in the world that can provide a complete set of intelligent front face system solutions.
In the field of global smart front-face related public patents, Minshi Group ranks among the best; data source: patent database
According to the business layout of Minshi Group's 2021 performance announcement, in the past year, its smart exterior business has been recognized by customers and is gradually harvesting mass production orders.
In addition, in the face of the trend of automotive intelligence, Minshi Group has further realized the extension of the scope of intelligent exterior decoration from the front face to the entire body such as the door and tailgate. At this stage, Minshi Group can provide intelligent exterior components and complete solutions including intelligent front face system, intelligent door system and intelligent tailgate system products. It is believed that in the future, with the continuous increase of its customers' related products, this emerging business segment is bound to provide a new pillar of growth for the performance of Minsit Group.
Quoting Chen Qingtai, chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, "Electrification is only the prelude to this automotive revolution, and ultimately realizes the collaborative integration of smart cars, smart energy, smart transportation, and smart cities." This is the direction of the next step of efforts, and it is also the focus of the next step of competition. The same goes for automotive exteriors.
It can be seen that as one of the world's largest suppliers of exterior accessories, Minshi Group is using its highly competitive traditional exterior parts as a carrier to continuously expand intelligent exterior decorations with attributes such as luminescence and interaction, so as to complete the rapid iteration from a single supplier of exterior accessories to an integrated supplier of intelligent exterior trim, and use this as a "weapon" to continue to stand on the international stage.