Haitian International presents at Chinaplas 2016 “Technology to the point”, with a clear position on smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0
“Some 26,000 machines sold, the second-best exports figures in our history, sales increases of almost 50% in the all-electric segment: There’s no doubt about it, 2015 was an outstanding year for Haitian International. Even though the difficult market conditions increasingly demand greater efforts from the mechanical engineering industry, we see at the same time the opportunity to grow from these challenges and reach new goals. Flexibility is a key success driver”.
Clear advantages with technology to the point
Haitian’s approach is to construct highly flexible injection-molding machines using innovative “Technology to the Point”. Designed for flexible production for diverse categories of plastic parts. Optionally it is possible to integrate all conceivable manufacturing cells using all available international standard interfaces such as Euromap or SPI. Similarly, it is possible to integrate these machines with all conceivable interfaces to networked manufacturing processes.
This consistent demand-oriented portfolio strategy has proven in difficult times. It allows the molder fast and energy-efficient solutions and provides clear competitive advantages through a broad scope for action and short-term flexibility to new customer demands.
Technological and machine-side flexibility in addition to “Technology to the Point” will gain more and more importance. It will be the significant benchmark and success factor of future machine series. Plastics processors can already manufacture an unusually broad range of parts within a product group of similar parameters efficiently and precisely on our standardized machines. In future we are going to make these machines much more flexible, more efficient, simpler to operate, and networked through standardized interfaces.
Customer benefit and added value count
Prof. Helmar Franz, Board Member of Haitian International: “We have been discussing the concepts and modules very intensively in regard to ‘Industry 4.0’ for some time at Haitian International, and also with our system partners and customers. Whether, when, and how our machines are to be integrated into an ‘intelligent’ environment depends in the end on the benefit that accrues from it. However before such process can begin it’s important to take into account a number challenges, which are mostly beyond our control – issues such as data security, network availability, and internet stability. On the other hand the question arises whether it makes any sense. Not everything that is technically possible makes economic sense for individual processors. It is more to find the golden mean, the perfect balance between flexibility and productivity.”
Haitian International will continue to progress from being a specialist engineering company to a provider of complete system solutions. Our course has been set and important steps have already been made. Engineers, system developers, IT experts of the Haitian Group work together in intercontinental teams and pursue different approaches and objectives. This includes matters like optimizing interfaces within the system landscape, to integrate highly-standardized injection molding machines much more flexibly into automated processes and production lines without compromising on productivity.
In the meantime, the continuous expansion of the standard machinery portfolio always provides new opportunities for the processors to expand the scope of their production capacity. Innovative machine series like the electrical Zhafir Zeres Series with its integrated hydraulics have set impressive signals, the expansion of the all-electrical Zhafir Venus Series to small and mid-size clamping forces continues successively, and industry-specific optimization and model variations of the two-platen Haitian Jupiter Series for specific market requirements have been already realized successfully. Furthermore many of machine options belong to the standard range of functions at Haitian and Zhafir without extra costs. The path towards to more flexibility: Haitian International has already started the journey.