1. Introduction

Huaqin Co., Ltd. (“Huaqin”) is a global leader in the smart hardware ODM (Original Design Manufacturer) industry, with a product portfolio covering smartphones, laptops, tablets, wearable devices, and other smart terminals. Serving top-tier global tech brands, Huaqin faces challenges such as massive order volumes, extreme R&D cycles, and complex global supply chains. The company regards efficient, consistent, and reliable quality delivery as a core competitive advantage. To address the challenges of multi-site collaboration and parallel technology routes in quality management, Huaqin partnered with Xi’an AEH Industrial Metrology Co., Ltd. (“AEH”) to leverage AEH’s full measurement chain software and platform capabilities. Together, they successfully built a group-level “Unified Quality Data Platform,” enabling digital, transparent, and intelligent collaboration in global manufacturing network quality management, setting a new benchmark for scalable high-quality operations in the smart hardware ODM industry.

2. Case Background

Huaqin’s business model results in extreme complexity in quality management:

• First, device and data “dialects” abound, as global R&D centers and production sites use diverse branded measurement equipment to meet different customer needs, creating fragmented “data islands” with varied inspection programs and data formats.
• Second, low efficiency in quality collaboration, especially during New Product Introduction (NPI), where measurement programs must be repeatedly developed and debugged at each site without knowledge reuse; during production, management struggles to obtain real-time, cross-factory, and cross-product key quality indicators (CQIs).
• Third, quality decisions lack a global perspective due to the absence of a unified data analytics foundation, hindering the discovery of common issues and improvement patterns from vast historical inspection data, thus obstructing process optimization and knowledge transfer.
  Building a platform to unify data standards and enable real-time global quality data exchange became a strategic necessity for Huaqin to improve overall operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

3. Key Approaches

1. Concept Integration: Establishing a global quality governance philosophy of “One Platform, One Language, One Standard.”

The project abandoned the traditional “autonomous” base model and established a top-level strategy centered on a “digital platform” to achieve “unified quality language, standardized management processes, and intelligent decision analysis.” The core is connecting dispersed manufacturing units into a collaborative quality network via a central platform, aligning with AEH’s strategic positioning as an “empowerment partner” providing systemic capabilities rather than point tools.

2. Software First: Standardizing global measurement “language” with NET.DMIS.

The foundational step was rolling out AEH’s NET.DMIS measurement software, certified by Germany’s PTB, as the standard measurement platform group-wide. The software’s heterogeneous DMIS conversion engine plays a key role by automatically “translating” proprietary measurement programs from various branded devices (CMMs, vision systems) into unified, interpretable NET.DMIS commands. This software-level standardization of global inspection equipment breaks longstanding program barriers, fundamentally enabling data interoperability.

3. Platform Hub: Deploying EMRP as the group’s “Quality Digital Brain.”

Building on unified data generation, Huaqin deployed AEH’s EMRP intelligent quality management platform as the group-level “quality digital brain” with three core functions:

• Real-time global data aggregation and visualization: All NET.DMIS-generated measurement data plus related quality info from test stations and MES systems are aggregated via industrial IoT into the EMRP central database. Management accesses global dashboards showing first-pass yield, key dimension CPK, and other core metrics across factories and product lines in real-time.
• Intelligent benchmarking and deep analysis: Custom dashboards enable horizontal benchmarking of the same product across factories, quickly identifying best practices and improvement opportunities. Big data analytics support cross-product and cross-cycle quality anomaly correlation and root cause tracing.
• Knowledge retention and closed-loop management: Digital workflows capture NPI measurement plans, program debugging experiences, and production problem solutions into a standardized knowledge base. When introducing new products at other factories, historical plans can be rapidly recalled and adapted, reducing average NPI measurement program debugging time by 40%.

4. System Empowerment: Deeply embedding digitalization into strict customer quality requirements.

Serving many top international brands, Huaqin must comply with diverse customer quality systems. AEH’s open and compliant solutions support mainstream CAD formats and PMI annotations, accelerating Model-Based Definition (MBD) processes. EMRP provides a complete, traceable, auditable data chain, facilitating remote customer quality audits. AEH’s rigorous quality standards from design to production ensure long-term stability and reliability of the measurement system as a trustworthy data source.

4. Lessons Learned

Huaqin’s group-level unified quality data platform provides a systemic solution to the complex quality management challenges of multi-site, multi-customer, and multi-technology route global smart hardware manufacturers. It proves that under device heterogeneity, achieving “data isomorphism” via unified high-end industrial software is a feasible and efficient path to building digital quality capabilities.

The project’s value lies not only in unprecedented transparency of group quality data but also in creating a continuous “network effect”: each new factory or production line joining the platform contributes to the group’s quality knowledge base and data insights. This enables Huaqin to optimize global manufacturing resource allocation and process levels data-driven, steadily improving overall product yield. The “Huaqin-AEH” cooperation model exemplifies how, in the intelligent era, advanced industrial software and platforms become new infrastructure connecting physical manufacturing and digital decision-making, empowering global operational excellence with broad industry relevance.