Galanz Group, one of the leading enterprises in the Chinese household electrical appliance industry, began operations with the first phase of its Industry 4.0 base in the Shunde district of Foshan, Guangdong province, on Tuesday.

With four new smart manufacturing lines, the base, which is capable of producing a microwave oven in 6.7 seconds, will have a production capacity of 11 million microwaves annually, a company source said.

Liang Huiqiang, vice-president of Galanz, said the base, with an investment of more than 10 billion yuan ($1.41 billion), will be a pilot project for the smart household manufacturing project in Shunde, which is an important base in China's electrical appliance industry.

"Traditionally, we need more than 100 workers to reach our production capacity every day," Liang said.

The base, with large inputs of industrial robots in the four production lines, boosts overall production efficiency, Liang said.

"Galanz is undergoing a transformation from traditional processing to smart manufacturing. Also, we are accelerating research and development of core technologies in white goods and the internet of things, such as the open-source chips," Liang said.