Some problems are solved with Funda`s and these are called Fundamnetals and others are solved with a Dunda (Long Stick ) and these are called Dundamentals.
Both Fundamentals and Dundamentals are not used in the Industry. Any normal issue and we fail to apply the fundamentals to resolve the same and any complex issues and we fail to use the Dunda to resolve the issue.
Say, a yarn is not able to run on a machine, we then try to adjust the speed, make changes in the setting, look at humidity, change the yarn etc etc. I recall as a young engineer working for a machine maker, I was sent to support an engineer who was struggling to resolve a problem with a customer, wherein the yarn on twisting machine would give untwisted results intermittently and this had caused havoc with the customer. He had used the twisted yarn on the warp beam and screwed up around 10,000 metres of fabric with streaks of untwisted yarns showing up intermittently on the fabric.
My colleague did all possible settings, changed yarns, continuously monitored the spindle for any slippage, reduced speeds, monitored the take up speed, checked the cam , overfeed and every possible thing. We would then take the yarn, make a pirn out of it and use in weft and the untwisted would show up again. Though the package itself will show absolutely normal twisting. This was such a mystery, where Hitchcock would have fancied writing another best seller. The invisible hand was coming and untwisting the yarn.
At this stage, I told the management of the mill that as far as we were concerned, Machine was perfectly ok and the DTY maker had made a very special invention with Hitchcock effect and they do better contact them. But the management would not leave me. Well,I wrote my report and returned to Bombay.
A month later, the DTY, makers, which is now the worlds largest had to pay compensation of screwing up the fabric and other losses.
The Fundamental was that if the spindle speed was not varying and the take up was not showing any varitation, then no way the yarn can show differential twisting. So, no matter, how much the customer cried foul on my machine, I did not bother and made my report. The same got proven. This is called Funda.
The Dundamentals are anyday more interesting and more effective. I recall one such experience, when I was working for a polyester staple fibre plant, in the night shift a pump stopped. The maintenance was called and they checked and found everything was ok with it ,but the pump shamelessly refused to run. At this stage, I asked my operator to bring the Dunda from my room. I hit the Dunda hard on the head of the pump and there it went, gha gha, gha,.............and went to full swing.
Well, Dunda is more effective with the people, who usually show the above pump effect. There are more obstructive managers, then conducive managers. Dundamentals show better results there.
Dundamentals is a Management Technology and has my Handprint and Footprint.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Greece Glory 2 Gloom !
Two years back, I changed all my Dollar assets into Euro and now all my Euro have gone on a spin. So, first I lost on Dollar and now on Euro. Guess, keeping in some Asian currency is more sensible.
Thanks to Greece and Euro has sunk.
Greece is a small country with an interesting history. Known for its Philosophy, Mathematics and the Acropolis.
The total population is only around 11.5 million people. Which would account to be around the total population of 1 metropolis city of India. Early 19th century, out from the Ottoman empire, Greece was largely a kingdom till late 1960 and much into war before that either fighting the Germans or the Italians or the communist.
At GDP per capital of USD30k+, it is still too strong to cause any major issue, but the budget deficit of Euro 30 billion has sent the panic bell ringing across Europe. It would easily refinance the same via bonds or help from Germany or IMF etc. But what I want to drive from this blog is how countries fail to exploit there own ancient culture and heritage as part of their Tourism.
Greece with its many islands is a major tourist country. Much of its economy depends on tourism and it is estimated around 20 million tourist would have visited Greece in the last year.
I have been to Greece 3 times and I had around 5 customers , all based in Athens. Year after year, I saw the textile industry collapse and on my last visit, my customer Helatex told me , may be next time, you come, the company will not be there and the same happened. What is left in Greece today, is the skeleton of one time flourishing textile industry.
Textile is not just an industry, it is also a very large job provider, in fact amongst all industries, Textile employs the most people. Therefore in any over populated nation or poor nation, Textile becomes the key employer and a social keeper of society. However, the reverse is also true, that as the economy moves north wards for the country, textile is the first industry to be axed. Greece was no omission to it.
What pains me, when the Textile Industry altogether is wiped out of a country, then it is a very large part of history, culture and heritage, which the country looses out. The skill, knowledge and expertise of all those who have been into this industry slowly decays.
Ancient Greeks were the first to have textiles from the Roman empire and that knowledge went down till the last century. However, the next generation would never know, what Textiles was part of their culture, except in the library books.
Second, for each and every country I have traveled, I have never seen " Textiles " being promoted as the part of culture and traditions of that nation. I recall visiting Athens and having a Greek Salad, and recall going for a nice Greek Dance and a cruise to the nearby islands and having my picture shot with Ms Universe, who incidentally was traveling to that Island. I also recall buying Acropolis as souvenir and visiting the museum.
But I don't recall that I could anywhere buy any "Textiles" which was special to Greece. Nor was it seen in the Museum at Acropolis.
If an average of 20 Million annual visitors to Greece would buy one metre of textile MADE IN GREECE as souvenir , it would still make 20 million metres of fabric and the garments or home furnishing or dresses etc. Making of 20 million metres would atleast employ 1000 people directly to indirectly. And for a nation of 11.5 million, and may be the working group of only 3 to 4 million, this is still a large volume. But more important is the preservation of a culture , heritage and history of a nation.
Textile is not just an industry, it is an art, culture, history, tradition, design, skill , knowledge and a piece of joy.
When last I stayed at North Carolina US at Hilton, the most outstanding thing that was written in large letters and carved on bronze plate was . " All The Textiles Used In This Hotel Is Made In USA"
Well, there is a message in it. Unless Inter Industry supports one another and Nations value their culture and heritage, the world will only sink to the limits of greed.
Thanks to Greece and Euro has sunk.
Greece is a small country with an interesting history. Known for its Philosophy, Mathematics and the Acropolis.
The total population is only around 11.5 million people. Which would account to be around the total population of 1 metropolis city of India. Early 19th century, out from the Ottoman empire, Greece was largely a kingdom till late 1960 and much into war before that either fighting the Germans or the Italians or the communist.
At GDP per capital of USD30k+, it is still too strong to cause any major issue, but the budget deficit of Euro 30 billion has sent the panic bell ringing across Europe. It would easily refinance the same via bonds or help from Germany or IMF etc. But what I want to drive from this blog is how countries fail to exploit there own ancient culture and heritage as part of their Tourism.
Greece with its many islands is a major tourist country. Much of its economy depends on tourism and it is estimated around 20 million tourist would have visited Greece in the last year.
I have been to Greece 3 times and I had around 5 customers , all based in Athens. Year after year, I saw the textile industry collapse and on my last visit, my customer Helatex told me , may be next time, you come, the company will not be there and the same happened. What is left in Greece today, is the skeleton of one time flourishing textile industry.
Textile is not just an industry, it is also a very large job provider, in fact amongst all industries, Textile employs the most people. Therefore in any over populated nation or poor nation, Textile becomes the key employer and a social keeper of society. However, the reverse is also true, that as the economy moves north wards for the country, textile is the first industry to be axed. Greece was no omission to it.
What pains me, when the Textile Industry altogether is wiped out of a country, then it is a very large part of history, culture and heritage, which the country looses out. The skill, knowledge and expertise of all those who have been into this industry slowly decays.
Ancient Greeks were the first to have textiles from the Roman empire and that knowledge went down till the last century. However, the next generation would never know, what Textiles was part of their culture, except in the library books.
Second, for each and every country I have traveled, I have never seen " Textiles " being promoted as the part of culture and traditions of that nation. I recall visiting Athens and having a Greek Salad, and recall going for a nice Greek Dance and a cruise to the nearby islands and having my picture shot with Ms Universe, who incidentally was traveling to that Island. I also recall buying Acropolis as souvenir and visiting the museum.
But I don't recall that I could anywhere buy any "Textiles" which was special to Greece. Nor was it seen in the Museum at Acropolis.
If an average of 20 Million annual visitors to Greece would buy one metre of textile MADE IN GREECE as souvenir , it would still make 20 million metres of fabric and the garments or home furnishing or dresses etc. Making of 20 million metres would atleast employ 1000 people directly to indirectly. And for a nation of 11.5 million, and may be the working group of only 3 to 4 million, this is still a large volume. But more important is the preservation of a culture , heritage and history of a nation.
Textile is not just an industry, it is an art, culture, history, tradition, design, skill , knowledge and a piece of joy.
When last I stayed at North Carolina US at Hilton, the most outstanding thing that was written in large letters and carved on bronze plate was . " All The Textiles Used In This Hotel Is Made In USA"
Well, there is a message in it. Unless Inter Industry supports one another and Nations value their culture and heritage, the world will only sink to the limits of greed.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tea Bag and Threads or Unsafe Condom ?
Tea Bag and Threads is a potential source of Food Contamination.
Those who have worked in Textile Industry ( In most developing countries ) know well that how yarn is handled. The operator goes to the Loo , which for sure has no running water, uses his hands to clear the small thing and is back on the machine, threading the yarn which will then become your tea bag thread.
Well, one would argue, that the thread then goes for washing and bleaching cycles and hence should be clean enough.
But would you take a risk ? At a certain temperature the thread and bag will release any chemicals left out in the bleaching cycle.
Secondly, boil tea leaves and make tea and try using boiled water and using tea bags to make tea. There is a world of difference. Flavors cannot pass the Non Woven Bag. It can impart some color of tea, it can give some taste of tea to the water . But it is still not the same ,perhaps the right analogy would be like having sex with condom, however, in this case an unsafe condom.
Further, on one side, we want to be fully organic, health conscious, hygienic and on the other side, we tend to ignore the marketing traps around us.
The good old way of using tea leaves and boiling them to have a refreshing tea cup is much nicer then using a tea bag. Why did they not go and invent coffee bags ?
Left over to the marketers , they would make a Thread and Call it God`s Thread and get it blessed by the Vatican or your favorite religious guru and each of us is wearing around us, as source of Good Luck.
Say no to plastics, say no to tea bags.
Those who have worked in Textile Industry ( In most developing countries ) know well that how yarn is handled. The operator goes to the Loo , which for sure has no running water, uses his hands to clear the small thing and is back on the machine, threading the yarn which will then become your tea bag thread.
Well, one would argue, that the thread then goes for washing and bleaching cycles and hence should be clean enough.
But would you take a risk ? At a certain temperature the thread and bag will release any chemicals left out in the bleaching cycle.
Secondly, boil tea leaves and make tea and try using boiled water and using tea bags to make tea. There is a world of difference. Flavors cannot pass the Non Woven Bag. It can impart some color of tea, it can give some taste of tea to the water . But it is still not the same ,perhaps the right analogy would be like having sex with condom, however, in this case an unsafe condom.
Further, on one side, we want to be fully organic, health conscious, hygienic and on the other side, we tend to ignore the marketing traps around us.
The good old way of using tea leaves and boiling them to have a refreshing tea cup is much nicer then using a tea bag. Why did they not go and invent coffee bags ?
Left over to the marketers , they would make a Thread and Call it God`s Thread and get it blessed by the Vatican or your favorite religious guru and each of us is wearing around us, as source of Good Luck.
Say no to plastics, say no to tea bags.
Controlled Drawing With Twisting - Sewing Thread Secret .
Well Thread is perhaps the largest Sewing Thread maker in Bangladesh.
The owner Nurul Bhai and his family are my very close friends. The story of Well Thread goes to early 20th century, wherein the father, started a small plant making sewing threads and was famously known in Chittagong as Sutli Wala
As a Home Industry with some basic machines, he would buy the raw yarn, then twist and color them in a pot and wind it on small cones and pack it on his back and sell to the market. Same is the story of Hassan Bhai in Egypt and Coats Owner, an Iranian Jew, who got settled in UK and made a global sewing thread empire.
Since my largest customer base around the globe is sewing thread makers, I know most of them personally. Whether it is Diktas in Turkey or Best Thread in China, all of these have grown year after year. Sewing Thread perhaps is the most profitable textile product line as I have never seen one single sewing thread maker going bankrupt. The only entry barrier is managing a large customer base and hence a large working capital. Infact, the only Textile Manufacturing business, which flourishes in Europe and US is still Sewing Thread
One of the biggest failures of sewing thread industry has been to change the business model into " Made To Order " Business. If Garment industry orders colors and cones as per their requirements, then other then black and white and some other color assortment , the whole business should practically run on Made to order. The Bazaar trade can also be switched to Made To Order, as long as the marketer is not greedy about dumping the production and showing false sales.
Well Thread is today even bigger then Coats in Bangladesh and has one of the most modern plant and a very diverse range of product.
Sewing Thread companies are relatively richer companies like Coats , A&E, Union Thread, Madeira , DMC, Well Thread, Vardhaman and countless more.
Another example is a small company, " Threads India" which has gone in to make a product range, which is technically the best in the world in Filament Based Threads. This company used Technology as its strategic Strength. Coming from a family of machine makers, they knew more on exploiting the machines and made very special machines to then produce Threads, which were most unique in the world. However, as they did not have the same marketing skills as Coats or A&E, they could still not position themselves as a global player.
One Such Technology was the Controlled Drawing With Twisting. I have never seen any sewing thread company in the world using such a machine. But this was their own design. Like I wrote in my first blog, technology in textiles is loaded on the machine and unless you are an expert textile engineer, you can never get the technology from the standard machine configurations. Many a times, you need to design your own machines and keep them secret. The result of drawing and twisting together is that the tenacity of the yarn zooms up and product then gets a PPF, which is unrivaled.
Write to me to design this machine for you. Machine Builders make only machines which have commercial scope and not for special applications.
The owner Nurul Bhai and his family are my very close friends. The story of Well Thread goes to early 20th century, wherein the father, started a small plant making sewing threads and was famously known in Chittagong as Sutli Wala
As a Home Industry with some basic machines, he would buy the raw yarn, then twist and color them in a pot and wind it on small cones and pack it on his back and sell to the market. Same is the story of Hassan Bhai in Egypt and Coats Owner, an Iranian Jew, who got settled in UK and made a global sewing thread empire.
Since my largest customer base around the globe is sewing thread makers, I know most of them personally. Whether it is Diktas in Turkey or Best Thread in China, all of these have grown year after year. Sewing Thread perhaps is the most profitable textile product line as I have never seen one single sewing thread maker going bankrupt. The only entry barrier is managing a large customer base and hence a large working capital. Infact, the only Textile Manufacturing business, which flourishes in Europe and US is still Sewing Thread
One of the biggest failures of sewing thread industry has been to change the business model into " Made To Order " Business. If Garment industry orders colors and cones as per their requirements, then other then black and white and some other color assortment , the whole business should practically run on Made to order. The Bazaar trade can also be switched to Made To Order, as long as the marketer is not greedy about dumping the production and showing false sales.
Well Thread is today even bigger then Coats in Bangladesh and has one of the most modern plant and a very diverse range of product.
Sewing Thread companies are relatively richer companies like Coats , A&E, Union Thread, Madeira , DMC, Well Thread, Vardhaman and countless more.
Another example is a small company, " Threads India" which has gone in to make a product range, which is technically the best in the world in Filament Based Threads. This company used Technology as its strategic Strength. Coming from a family of machine makers, they knew more on exploiting the machines and made very special machines to then produce Threads, which were most unique in the world. However, as they did not have the same marketing skills as Coats or A&E, they could still not position themselves as a global player.
One Such Technology was the Controlled Drawing With Twisting. I have never seen any sewing thread company in the world using such a machine. But this was their own design. Like I wrote in my first blog, technology in textiles is loaded on the machine and unless you are an expert textile engineer, you can never get the technology from the standard machine configurations. Many a times, you need to design your own machines and keep them secret. The result of drawing and twisting together is that the tenacity of the yarn zooms up and product then gets a PPF, which is unrivaled.
Write to me to design this machine for you. Machine Builders make only machines which have commercial scope and not for special applications.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sewing Threads
Sewing Threads are my favorite.
One product, where you buy yarn in kgs and sell thread in metres. What could be more profitable then this.
Sewing Threads are simple to manufacture , but marketing of sewing thread is not the same as other textile products. It is largely a game of colors and logistics.
Now that the Garment Industry is well organized, the marketing of sewing thread has become relatively easier and profitable business.
The most common counts are 20s, and 40s in different plies and then color it and shape it and dump it to the customer.
However, the sewing thread industry should be prepared that sewing machines will soon be compatible to run larger cones and there would be no need to make the small y cones and other fancy cones. Many a garment makers have already started using 5 inches and 6 inches cones in South America and it would not take long before the trend catches elsewhere.
Also as most cone winders have now measured length delivery so it makes it all the more easier to service the garment makers. Time is coming, when garment makers will not follow the ticket system and shall order directly to the spinner or dyer for the shade and calculate the exact length required to make the garment and order exact number of cones.
As for lubrication, sewing thread has been fooling itself that Silicon Lubricants are the Ideal lubricants . Silicon is a heat dissipate sink , but does not have any antistatic properties or strong lubricating properties. I have changed many a sewing thread makers to use a better and cheaper alternative.
Lastly, sooner or later, the Industry will realize that a simple bonding agent is much easier alternative to join garments, then stitching all the way. Kodak did not see this obvious fact with its photo films and went extinct. The Industry should ensure the " Kodak " should not happen to it.
Filament Sewing Thread making is quite a bit of technology beyond simple twisting. Not many , including large Multinationals have this technology. Silicon Lubricants for filament yarns have zero results.
Most important, the sewing thread industry needs to be Carbon Compliant, as it is the biggest polluter . Read my blog : Plastic Dyetubes or Weapons of Mass Destruction. The pollution further extends to discharge of effluent, inefficient use of water etc etc.
One product, where you buy yarn in kgs and sell thread in metres. What could be more profitable then this.
Sewing Threads are simple to manufacture , but marketing of sewing thread is not the same as other textile products. It is largely a game of colors and logistics.
Now that the Garment Industry is well organized, the marketing of sewing thread has become relatively easier and profitable business.
The most common counts are 20s, and 40s in different plies and then color it and shape it and dump it to the customer.
However, the sewing thread industry should be prepared that sewing machines will soon be compatible to run larger cones and there would be no need to make the small y cones and other fancy cones. Many a garment makers have already started using 5 inches and 6 inches cones in South America and it would not take long before the trend catches elsewhere.
Also as most cone winders have now measured length delivery so it makes it all the more easier to service the garment makers. Time is coming, when garment makers will not follow the ticket system and shall order directly to the spinner or dyer for the shade and calculate the exact length required to make the garment and order exact number of cones.
As for lubrication, sewing thread has been fooling itself that Silicon Lubricants are the Ideal lubricants . Silicon is a heat dissipate sink , but does not have any antistatic properties or strong lubricating properties. I have changed many a sewing thread makers to use a better and cheaper alternative.
Lastly, sooner or later, the Industry will realize that a simple bonding agent is much easier alternative to join garments, then stitching all the way. Kodak did not see this obvious fact with its photo films and went extinct. The Industry should ensure the " Kodak " should not happen to it.
Filament Sewing Thread making is quite a bit of technology beyond simple twisting. Not many , including large Multinationals have this technology. Silicon Lubricants for filament yarns have zero results.
Most important, the sewing thread industry needs to be Carbon Compliant, as it is the biggest polluter . Read my blog : Plastic Dyetubes or Weapons of Mass Destruction. The pollution further extends to discharge of effluent, inefficient use of water etc etc.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Twisting : Wasteful Power N Killer Sound
TFO Twisting is relatively new Technology. However, when it comes to the Machine Design, it is questionable.
First Twist : Between the Twist Tube and the Moving Spindle.
Second Twist : Between the package and the Moving Spindle .
In both the twist, the Moving Spindle is the Control Point. Higher the Speed of the spindle, more the production.
But, then Industry has found that beyond a certain speed threshold, the power consumption does not go up linearly, but geomaterically. So, here is a technology, which has inherent PPF limitations ( For PPF, read my post on Quality )
As long as the power cost are lower, this issue is not a limiting factor, however, as soon as the power cost does not justify the incremental benefit of productivity, the machine does not pass the Viability Threshold.
Machine makers did move recently in the direction of making smaller pot diameters to battle the high energy cost. But no sooner you go to a smaller pot diameter, the PPF of the Twisted Package reduces as the output is Knotted yarn, which the subsequent user does not want.
The machine makers did not see that the solution was in simply making 8 inches and 10 inches feed packages.
A 8 inches feed package machine will automatically give a 1.86 kg package without knot on a rather smaller spindle diameter, then a 6 inches package. And if it is 10 inches, then the spindle becomes far more smaller.
While Volkmann and Murata, both made smaller and smaller pot size and as low as 90mm, but not gone into designing a larger feed package simultaneously to make it a superior machine.
The argument given is that this will give a larger balloon and hence the power consumption advantage will get nullified. However, as per field experiments carried out by me ( We designed a 8 inches package and fed to a smaller pot dia, of only 135 mm and came up with a 1.86 kg package without knot) and we found that actually, the speeds could be taken up to 14,000 rpm with a productivity increase of 17% from a speed of 12,000 rpm and with no increase in power consumption. Plus the bonus of increase in efficiency in Assembly Winder.
Therefore, if One Knot is acceptable limits, then a pot dia of only 70mm is enough to take the speeds upto 20,000 rpm and bring in a productivity gain of around 100%. Buy the technology of hairiness control from me.
Though Volkmann does offer 8 inches feed package, but has never been able to successfully pitch it to the customers, on account of lack of facts and figures.
Further, why not have the balloon enclosed in a vacuumed environment to keep the balloon drag lowest.
Unfortunately, no work has been done in this direction. But general common sense would say, if you were to enclose the spindle in a vacuumed area, the air drag should be practically zero. Which would mean, enclose the spindle right till the balloon breaker guide and with a vacuum pump keep pulling the air out.
I have no experience with it, but can still say, that the balloon drag will significantly reduce and the power consumption drop.
Second.
The times of running spindles with Belt is over. Each spindle needs a simple motor drive directly coupled to the spindle. ( There are now motors avl to run at speeds of 100,000 rpm)
Third :
The take up does not need cams anymore. For a straight simple package, there are enough reversible motors available.
Fourth
The deafening sound of the machine can be better avoided by keeping the headstock outside the department and the main machine inside the department. ( Though, if individual motors are installed, this sound thing is naturally taken care). A good engineer will , however, also keep the Belt running below the floor level and cover the service area with a checker plate. The whole issue of Machine sound is covered. But only if the machine makers themselves have seriousness to advise the client for such simple solutions.
Fifth
Machines have to be Double Decker. Floor space is becoming very expensive and more and more mills have no room for expansion. This also permits more spindles being covered by the same operator,
Sixth
If power is such a major issue in Twisting, then why not provide on the panel a power meter. It cost now only Euro 100, but is a significant tool in the hands of the management to take the productivity up .
Seventh
Technology has to move further to Four For One Twisting. A Turkish Twisting machine maker has gone in to turn the take up drum and insert two twist. This gives a direct opportunity to make Four For One Twister. Two twist coming from the tail of the twister and two coming from the head of the twister.
Well, the biggest drag in innovation is sometimes the user himself. The user goes largely by Industry perceptions and less by his own experience. Unless and untill the user is ready to challenge the STATE OF BEING AND INNOVATE, most machine makers themselves cannot bring about any improvement.
First Twist : Between the Twist Tube and the Moving Spindle.
Second Twist : Between the package and the Moving Spindle .
In both the twist, the Moving Spindle is the Control Point. Higher the Speed of the spindle, more the production.
But, then Industry has found that beyond a certain speed threshold, the power consumption does not go up linearly, but geomaterically. So, here is a technology, which has inherent PPF limitations ( For PPF, read my post on Quality )
As long as the power cost are lower, this issue is not a limiting factor, however, as soon as the power cost does not justify the incremental benefit of productivity, the machine does not pass the Viability Threshold.
Machine makers did move recently in the direction of making smaller pot diameters to battle the high energy cost. But no sooner you go to a smaller pot diameter, the PPF of the Twisted Package reduces as the output is Knotted yarn, which the subsequent user does not want.
The machine makers did not see that the solution was in simply making 8 inches and 10 inches feed packages.
A 8 inches feed package machine will automatically give a 1.86 kg package without knot on a rather smaller spindle diameter, then a 6 inches package. And if it is 10 inches, then the spindle becomes far more smaller.
While Volkmann and Murata, both made smaller and smaller pot size and as low as 90mm, but not gone into designing a larger feed package simultaneously to make it a superior machine.
The argument given is that this will give a larger balloon and hence the power consumption advantage will get nullified. However, as per field experiments carried out by me ( We designed a 8 inches package and fed to a smaller pot dia, of only 135 mm and came up with a 1.86 kg package without knot) and we found that actually, the speeds could be taken up to 14,000 rpm with a productivity increase of 17% from a speed of 12,000 rpm and with no increase in power consumption. Plus the bonus of increase in efficiency in Assembly Winder.
Therefore, if One Knot is acceptable limits, then a pot dia of only 70mm is enough to take the speeds upto 20,000 rpm and bring in a productivity gain of around 100%. Buy the technology of hairiness control from me.
Though Volkmann does offer 8 inches feed package, but has never been able to successfully pitch it to the customers, on account of lack of facts and figures.
Further, why not have the balloon enclosed in a vacuumed environment to keep the balloon drag lowest.
Unfortunately, no work has been done in this direction. But general common sense would say, if you were to enclose the spindle in a vacuumed area, the air drag should be practically zero. Which would mean, enclose the spindle right till the balloon breaker guide and with a vacuum pump keep pulling the air out.
I have no experience with it, but can still say, that the balloon drag will significantly reduce and the power consumption drop.
Second.
The times of running spindles with Belt is over. Each spindle needs a simple motor drive directly coupled to the spindle. ( There are now motors avl to run at speeds of 100,000 rpm)
Third :
The take up does not need cams anymore. For a straight simple package, there are enough reversible motors available.
Fourth
The deafening sound of the machine can be better avoided by keeping the headstock outside the department and the main machine inside the department. ( Though, if individual motors are installed, this sound thing is naturally taken care). A good engineer will , however, also keep the Belt running below the floor level and cover the service area with a checker plate. The whole issue of Machine sound is covered. But only if the machine makers themselves have seriousness to advise the client for such simple solutions.
Fifth
Machines have to be Double Decker. Floor space is becoming very expensive and more and more mills have no room for expansion. This also permits more spindles being covered by the same operator,
Sixth
If power is such a major issue in Twisting, then why not provide on the panel a power meter. It cost now only Euro 100, but is a significant tool in the hands of the management to take the productivity up .
Seventh
Technology has to move further to Four For One Twisting. A Turkish Twisting machine maker has gone in to turn the take up drum and insert two twist. This gives a direct opportunity to make Four For One Twister. Two twist coming from the tail of the twister and two coming from the head of the twister.
Well, the biggest drag in innovation is sometimes the user himself. The user goes largely by Industry perceptions and less by his own experience. Unless and untill the user is ready to challenge the STATE OF BEING AND INNOVATE, most machine makers themselves cannot bring about any improvement.
Mr Spider : The Nano Spinner
As a child I was very fascinated to see that a little spider would weave a net intelligently around a spot. And then holding his guitar sing the famous poem to the flies " Will you walk into my parlor please " .
Little did I know that one day, I would go in to become a textile specialist and the spider would go in to become the first nano spinner.
For all those, who are not aware, Spider actually spins protein filaments and then weaves them so intricately that no human technology has been able to copy paste the same.
Little Mr Spider, the world has ignored learning from you that one single machine can actually spin and also weave and make a shape, which would catch at least fishes and make net garments for the feminine gender.
Mr Spider, you have been spinning Nano Filaments since time immemorial and we mortal human beings are still struggling to make a proper Nano filament, forget the weaving part of it, because we still have no solution to wind it.
But we don't even have a mind like you, which says, there is no need of weaving and as long as the extrusion goes into the environment, it would freeze and the strand would shape as per the design in our mind.
Also, New Zeland, Denmark and some other countries have been wasting their milk supplies, as could not find a better use beyond cheese and butter. We have succeeding in making protein fibers, but still don't know, how to spin it.
Mr Spider, which university did you take your Dip Eng ? How do you manage to make endless amount of protein filament and which computer program do you use for designing the web ?
Will you kindly write a blog on it. Only make sure that you don't write it from China, as google will not be able to take it any further. You already know well that the poor silk worm was identified by our Chinese brothers and rest is history.
So, in your case, we want that spider should not become the next insect to be industrialized . Don`t worry, we now have WWF taking care of such issues.
Only that the Chinese and Indians are known for copying, they could quickly copy your secret technology and it would become an infringement on natures own patents, so please use only Deutsch as the language for your presentation.
Nevertheless, one thing you have to appreciate that we have made you popular by using your web digitially and calling it world wide web or www.
Nature has most solutions, only if we have the vision to understand and capture them. We on the other hand are bent on destroying the environment. Read my blog on Dyetubes or Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Little did I know that one day, I would go in to become a textile specialist and the spider would go in to become the first nano spinner.
For all those, who are not aware, Spider actually spins protein filaments and then weaves them so intricately that no human technology has been able to copy paste the same.
Little Mr Spider, the world has ignored learning from you that one single machine can actually spin and also weave and make a shape, which would catch at least fishes and make net garments for the feminine gender.
Mr Spider, you have been spinning Nano Filaments since time immemorial and we mortal human beings are still struggling to make a proper Nano filament, forget the weaving part of it, because we still have no solution to wind it.
But we don't even have a mind like you, which says, there is no need of weaving and as long as the extrusion goes into the environment, it would freeze and the strand would shape as per the design in our mind.
Also, New Zeland, Denmark and some other countries have been wasting their milk supplies, as could not find a better use beyond cheese and butter. We have succeeding in making protein fibers, but still don't know, how to spin it.
Mr Spider, which university did you take your Dip Eng ? How do you manage to make endless amount of protein filament and which computer program do you use for designing the web ?
Will you kindly write a blog on it. Only make sure that you don't write it from China, as google will not be able to take it any further. You already know well that the poor silk worm was identified by our Chinese brothers and rest is history.
So, in your case, we want that spider should not become the next insect to be industrialized . Don`t worry, we now have WWF taking care of such issues.
Only that the Chinese and Indians are known for copying, they could quickly copy your secret technology and it would become an infringement on natures own patents, so please use only Deutsch as the language for your presentation.
Nevertheless, one thing you have to appreciate that we have made you popular by using your web digitially and calling it world wide web or www.
Nature has most solutions, only if we have the vision to understand and capture them. We on the other hand are bent on destroying the environment. Read my blog on Dyetubes or Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Quality : Simple is Sophisticated.
Quality in Textiles is the most misunderstood concept.
When I graduated as a Textile Engineer, the only thing I knew on Quality was that it should confirm statistically to the Standards/ specifications.
Therefore, if I am a yarn maker, and the yarn has a certain U%, RKM, neps etc etc, which is within the standard, then I am a great spinner.
No sooner, the yarn container reaches the customer, he shouts back and curses on the sub standard quality and one is confused, why did the quality fail, despite a clean bill of health from QC department .
As a line manager, I was always confused on what should be the sample size for checking to ensure that the bulk would confirm to the standards. Most management meetings, it was about, why the quality failed and the answer was ,sometimes the odd operator fault, most of the time the mixing of the yarns, odd twist failure or additional ply of yarn.
Finally, the Gyan Chaksu ( Third Eye ) opened and I understood that quality was not just a set of numbers, it was way beyond.
Quality could well be divided into:
Process Quality
Numeral Quality
Functional Quality
Visual Quality
Let us explore these aspects further.
Process Quality:
Process Quality is all about Process Integrity and is best mapped by Bench Marking.
Quality first is the organizational systems. If there are weak systems, no matter how good are your assets and how good are your inputs, the product quality will fail.
Building a robust system requires foresight into the failures and causes of failures.
Thereafter, Supervisory control is all about system confirmation.
Within the process quality, there are schedules for cleaning, maintenance, work practices, house keeping, standardization, discipline and above all passion for work, recording and tracking.
Something that is missing here is Bench Marking. Textile Industry still does not have Bench Marking as there are no Process Auditors on Best Practices.
Numeral Quality :
QC department religiously follows it and will pull out a report for any lot any time.
This is standard average performance guarantee cover of any product offerings of a company.
But these two functions are something which most companies are very good.
However, where most companies fail to see Quality is that there are Two Other major inputs of quality and unless and until these are sanitized , system will never guarantee a whole some quality.
Functional Quality :
Functional Quality is about Product Design, which would sustain functionality and extreme usage conditions. Let us call it Product Performance Factor or PPF.
If an automobile maker test his car for speeds, air bags, brakes, crashes etc etc, then he travels beyond the scope of Functionality in terms of standard driving to extreme conditions. Limits of failure are then the functionality threshold.
In Textiles, let us take an example of Yarn ; No matter, how good a yarn you have produced, but if it fails on the machines of the customer, then he would get up and complain. So, unless and until you are aware of the process and machines of the customer and his requirements, it is virtually impossible to comply with functional quality. Knitting yarn may work differently on Mayer& Cie machines then Laxmi machines. Laxmi machines might need a soft yarn with a lower twist or higher lubricity or better unwinding.
Even after having supplied many containers, the customer might get up and say, the last supply does not work on his machines. Despite no changes made in your process, it is usually intriguing , what went wrong.
Customer machine setting changes are beyond the control of a supplier and most of the time, the customer changes something in his process and the process weakens. These changes are never reported to the supplier and unless and until, the functional quality is made flexible, it would always get a complaint.
Example of Yarn : Flexible Functional Quality is directly linked to the Elongation of the yarn, tenacity, lubricity , unwinding properties and numeral consistency ( which is to say, consistent thick and thin places etc. )
Therefore Functional Quality is a designers function, where the Quality Paradigm switches from the Absolute number to a Functional Number . Say, the elongation request is for 7%, but knowing that the system will need a higher elongation, you would go back to the drawing board and set the production parameters to yield a higher elongation.
PPF is largely the Flexibility or the Degree of Freedom, the product provides. It is now your ingenuity to make a product which would endure the challenges of use, misuse, sub optimal use, lateral use or super use. Quality then moves to a Market Tangible Differentiator and gets automatically placed on the top of a value chain and creates a Natural Entry Barrier for the competition. However, this is Quality linked to Technology and Expertize.
The Designer Part of Functionality in Textile Production is largely missing as of now. More on account of the shape of business, which is commodity oriented then performance oriented.
Visual Quality : " Customers Delight "
The Most Important Part of Quality is Visual Quality .Let us call it VQ and draw an index VQI . No matter, what you produce, unless it looks good and feels good and is colorful and appealing, it will never stand out as an exclusive product.
For a yarn VQI would be : Shape of package, angle of wind, feel of the yarn , snarl of the yarn , reflectance, quality of paper cone, branding and visual hairiness. Give score to each of these based on what the market values most and relatively down.
Visual Quality is all together missing as a concept in Textiles.
It is only after the product reaches the Fashion stage that most of the textile gets valued as a Visual Delight . Unfortunately at no stage of manufacturing, people understand that any product , no matter how simple and insignificant is first judged by naked eyes and then moves forward.
Lastly and most important " Quality " has to be built only to the extent of what the customer needs and competition provides, specially in a commodity product, anything more or anything less is a total waste of time, money and effort.
The China Experience has shown that as long as the Price is Low, no matter, what quality you make, the buyer finds value. I have seen this also with some very big mills also, which keep the lowest prices and are the first to sell. No customer complains on their quality. Because at that price, he cannot find another supplier. But this model only generates Quick Turnover and is ok for companies with low working capital. For a serious mill, this model could be catastrophic.
However, for niche products, the quality may have another profiling. That needs Branding and Technology.
Do not over produce quality , just consistently produce quality. Six Sigma is state of mind and a way of life.
When I graduated as a Textile Engineer, the only thing I knew on Quality was that it should confirm statistically to the Standards/ specifications.
Therefore, if I am a yarn maker, and the yarn has a certain U%, RKM, neps etc etc, which is within the standard, then I am a great spinner.
No sooner, the yarn container reaches the customer, he shouts back and curses on the sub standard quality and one is confused, why did the quality fail, despite a clean bill of health from QC department .
As a line manager, I was always confused on what should be the sample size for checking to ensure that the bulk would confirm to the standards. Most management meetings, it was about, why the quality failed and the answer was ,sometimes the odd operator fault, most of the time the mixing of the yarns, odd twist failure or additional ply of yarn.
Finally, the Gyan Chaksu ( Third Eye ) opened and I understood that quality was not just a set of numbers, it was way beyond.
Quality could well be divided into:
Process Quality
Numeral Quality
Functional Quality
Visual Quality
Let us explore these aspects further.
Process Quality:
Process Quality is all about Process Integrity and is best mapped by Bench Marking.
Quality first is the organizational systems. If there are weak systems, no matter how good are your assets and how good are your inputs, the product quality will fail.
Building a robust system requires foresight into the failures and causes of failures.
Thereafter, Supervisory control is all about system confirmation.
Within the process quality, there are schedules for cleaning, maintenance, work practices, house keeping, standardization, discipline and above all passion for work, recording and tracking.
Something that is missing here is Bench Marking. Textile Industry still does not have Bench Marking as there are no Process Auditors on Best Practices.
Numeral Quality :
QC department religiously follows it and will pull out a report for any lot any time.
This is standard average performance guarantee cover of any product offerings of a company.
But these two functions are something which most companies are very good.
However, where most companies fail to see Quality is that there are Two Other major inputs of quality and unless and until these are sanitized , system will never guarantee a whole some quality.
Functional Quality :
Functional Quality is about Product Design, which would sustain functionality and extreme usage conditions. Let us call it Product Performance Factor or PPF.
If an automobile maker test his car for speeds, air bags, brakes, crashes etc etc, then he travels beyond the scope of Functionality in terms of standard driving to extreme conditions. Limits of failure are then the functionality threshold.
In Textiles, let us take an example of Yarn ; No matter, how good a yarn you have produced, but if it fails on the machines of the customer, then he would get up and complain. So, unless and until you are aware of the process and machines of the customer and his requirements, it is virtually impossible to comply with functional quality. Knitting yarn may work differently on Mayer& Cie machines then Laxmi machines. Laxmi machines might need a soft yarn with a lower twist or higher lubricity or better unwinding.
Even after having supplied many containers, the customer might get up and say, the last supply does not work on his machines. Despite no changes made in your process, it is usually intriguing , what went wrong.
Customer machine setting changes are beyond the control of a supplier and most of the time, the customer changes something in his process and the process weakens. These changes are never reported to the supplier and unless and until, the functional quality is made flexible, it would always get a complaint.
Example of Yarn : Flexible Functional Quality is directly linked to the Elongation of the yarn, tenacity, lubricity , unwinding properties and numeral consistency ( which is to say, consistent thick and thin places etc. )
Therefore Functional Quality is a designers function, where the Quality Paradigm switches from the Absolute number to a Functional Number . Say, the elongation request is for 7%, but knowing that the system will need a higher elongation, you would go back to the drawing board and set the production parameters to yield a higher elongation.
PPF is largely the Flexibility or the Degree of Freedom, the product provides. It is now your ingenuity to make a product which would endure the challenges of use, misuse, sub optimal use, lateral use or super use. Quality then moves to a Market Tangible Differentiator and gets automatically placed on the top of a value chain and creates a Natural Entry Barrier for the competition. However, this is Quality linked to Technology and Expertize.
The Designer Part of Functionality in Textile Production is largely missing as of now. More on account of the shape of business, which is commodity oriented then performance oriented.
Visual Quality : " Customers Delight "
The Most Important Part of Quality is Visual Quality .Let us call it VQ and draw an index VQI . No matter, what you produce, unless it looks good and feels good and is colorful and appealing, it will never stand out as an exclusive product.
For a yarn VQI would be : Shape of package, angle of wind, feel of the yarn , snarl of the yarn , reflectance, quality of paper cone, branding and visual hairiness. Give score to each of these based on what the market values most and relatively down.
Visual Quality is all together missing as a concept in Textiles.
It is only after the product reaches the Fashion stage that most of the textile gets valued as a Visual Delight . Unfortunately at no stage of manufacturing, people understand that any product , no matter how simple and insignificant is first judged by naked eyes and then moves forward.
Lastly and most important " Quality " has to be built only to the extent of what the customer needs and competition provides, specially in a commodity product, anything more or anything less is a total waste of time, money and effort.
The China Experience has shown that as long as the Price is Low, no matter, what quality you make, the buyer finds value. I have seen this also with some very big mills also, which keep the lowest prices and are the first to sell. No customer complains on their quality. Because at that price, he cannot find another supplier. But this model only generates Quick Turnover and is ok for companies with low working capital. For a serious mill, this model could be catastrophic.
However, for niche products, the quality may have another profiling. That needs Branding and Technology.
Do not over produce quality , just consistently produce quality. Six Sigma is state of mind and a way of life.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Plastic Dyetubes Or Weapons Of Mass Destruction.
If you visit a Yarn Dyeing Plant, then you cannot miss that almost all the plants in US, Europe, S.America and now quite a few in Asia, use Plastic Dyetubes as package centre for yarn dyeing.
Package centres for yarn dyeing were historically cones, which got changed to stainless steel cylinderical dyetubes and that got moved further to Dyesprings and that got replaced with Plastic Dyetubes.
Technologically, Mantex Dyesprings are the Best Solution, as they expand the capacity of dyeing, reduce the cost of yarn dyeing, provide a quality advantage on account of its openness, eco-friendly etc etc. But then the market flirts with whatever new comes it way. Plastic were the Inthing at one time and industry was exploring all applications,which the plastics could capture and one such application they found was plastic dyetubes.
Dyetubes are actually pathetic in terms of productivity as they have to be stacked on top of one another, can not dye polyester as PP is not 130 deg compliant and ofcourse environment hazard for its disposal. ITMA after ITMA I kept shouting to the yarn dyeing industry for the hazards of using Plastic Dyetubes and none would listen. However, now the time has come, when the world is realizing how plastics and related carbon emissions are becoming a global threat.
Ironically, still very large segment of yarn dyers do not realize that plastic dyetubes are Self Inflicted Weapons Of Mass Destruction.
Let us study this case below
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 1
COMPRESSIBLE PLASTIC DYETUBES
Compressible Plastic Dye tubes Most Yarn Dyers in Europe and US import their yarns out of Asia on these ONE TIME USE dye tubes. This helps direct dyeing, without the need of making a soft package.RESULT Dye tubes are only 75% recyclable and 25% disposed into the environment.
Average weight of a standard dye tube = 45 gmsAverage
Non reclaimable plastic contributed = 11.25 gms
Plastic disposed per day with 5 tons of dyeing/ day = 47 kgs
Plastics disposed per year of 300 days working = 14 Tons.
Plastics disposed by 100 such plants in US or Europe or Asia = 1400 TONS
14 TONS OF PLASTIC PER YEAR / YARN DYEING PLANT OF 5 TONS / DAY
OR 1400 TONS PER YEAR FROM 100 PLANTS IN ONE CONTINENT.
PLASTICS DISPOSED IN LAST 20 YEARS INTO ENVIRONMENT ON ACCOUNT OF THE ONE WAY
PLASTIC DYE TUBES IS 28.000 TONS IN ONE CONTINENT
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 2
NON COMPRESSIBLE PLASTIC DYETUBES
Additional Carbon Emissions = 25% = 7.5 Tons of CO2/ 5 tons of yarn dyeing per day.
Additional Power consumption = 25%. = 10 cents per kg
Additional Chemicals and auxiliaries = 25% = 12 cents per kg
Additional Water = 25% = 5 cents per kg
Additional Labour = 25% = 5 cents per kg
Additional water of 2 litres per kg of yarn dyeing works out to 10KL for 5 tons of yarn dyeing per day. For 300 days of working, the extra consumption is 3000K.
This 3000KL needs extra power for circulation, extra chemicals and auxiliaries, extra heat load, extra effluent treatment and is fully wasted at the end.
The plastic disposal is still a hazard.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 3
CASE STUDY OF SEWING THREAD INDUSTRY
Take the case of one large Multinational sewing thread maker having its spinning unit in China and rolling out polyester spun yarn sewing thread to its global dyeing and finishing operations.Say the capacity of this company is 200 tons of yarn dyeing per day ( actually much larger, but let me be generous )across its global operations,. Let us work out the Non Recylable plastic disposal of this company into the environment.
Plastic Disposal per day into the environment = 2.25 Tons.
Plastic Disposal per year ( 300 days) = 675 Tons.
Plastic Disposal in the last 10 years = 6750 Tons
Check the websites of any large MNC maker of sewing thread and read the Environmental Policy. Judge for yourself! This is only the plastic disposals equation. The secondary carbon emissions include the making of these plastic dyetubes.Transporting prewound soft packages into a container gives only 60% loading and this makes it still worse in terms of carbon emissions.Interestingly, the whole sewing thread industry across the world largely imports its spun polyester sewing thread yarns out of China on these dyetubes .
The impact of non recylable plastic disposal from such an Industry would account to more then a Million Ton each year.
Where is Greenpeace???
Package centres for yarn dyeing were historically cones, which got changed to stainless steel cylinderical dyetubes and that got moved further to Dyesprings and that got replaced with Plastic Dyetubes.
Technologically, Mantex Dyesprings are the Best Solution, as they expand the capacity of dyeing, reduce the cost of yarn dyeing, provide a quality advantage on account of its openness, eco-friendly etc etc. But then the market flirts with whatever new comes it way. Plastic were the Inthing at one time and industry was exploring all applications,which the plastics could capture and one such application they found was plastic dyetubes.
Dyetubes are actually pathetic in terms of productivity as they have to be stacked on top of one another, can not dye polyester as PP is not 130 deg compliant and ofcourse environment hazard for its disposal. ITMA after ITMA I kept shouting to the yarn dyeing industry for the hazards of using Plastic Dyetubes and none would listen. However, now the time has come, when the world is realizing how plastics and related carbon emissions are becoming a global threat.
Ironically, still very large segment of yarn dyers do not realize that plastic dyetubes are Self Inflicted Weapons Of Mass Destruction.
Let us study this case below
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 1
COMPRESSIBLE PLASTIC DYETUBES
Compressible Plastic Dye tubes Most Yarn Dyers in Europe and US import their yarns out of Asia on these ONE TIME USE dye tubes. This helps direct dyeing, without the need of making a soft package.RESULT Dye tubes are only 75% recyclable and 25% disposed into the environment.
Average weight of a standard dye tube = 45 gmsAverage
Non reclaimable plastic contributed = 11.25 gms
Plastic disposed per day with 5 tons of dyeing/ day = 47 kgs
Plastics disposed per year of 300 days working = 14 Tons.
Plastics disposed by 100 such plants in US or Europe or Asia = 1400 TONS
14 TONS OF PLASTIC PER YEAR / YARN DYEING PLANT OF 5 TONS / DAY
OR 1400 TONS PER YEAR FROM 100 PLANTS IN ONE CONTINENT.
PLASTICS DISPOSED IN LAST 20 YEARS INTO ENVIRONMENT ON ACCOUNT OF THE ONE WAY
PLASTIC DYE TUBES IS 28.000 TONS IN ONE CONTINENT
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 2
NON COMPRESSIBLE PLASTIC DYETUBES
Additional Carbon Emissions = 25% = 7.5 Tons of CO2/ 5 tons of yarn dyeing per day.
Additional Power consumption = 25%. = 10 cents per kg
Additional Chemicals and auxiliaries = 25% = 12 cents per kg
Additional Water = 25% = 5 cents per kg
Additional Labour = 25% = 5 cents per kg
Additional water of 2 litres per kg of yarn dyeing works out to 10KL for 5 tons of yarn dyeing per day. For 300 days of working, the extra consumption is 3000K.
This 3000KL needs extra power for circulation, extra chemicals and auxiliaries, extra heat load, extra effluent treatment and is fully wasted at the end.
The plastic disposal is still a hazard.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 3
CASE STUDY OF SEWING THREAD INDUSTRY
Take the case of one large Multinational sewing thread maker having its spinning unit in China and rolling out polyester spun yarn sewing thread to its global dyeing and finishing operations.Say the capacity of this company is 200 tons of yarn dyeing per day ( actually much larger, but let me be generous )across its global operations,. Let us work out the Non Recylable plastic disposal of this company into the environment.
Plastic Disposal per day into the environment = 2.25 Tons.
Plastic Disposal per year ( 300 days) = 675 Tons.
Plastic Disposal in the last 10 years = 6750 Tons
Check the websites of any large MNC maker of sewing thread and read the Environmental Policy. Judge for yourself! This is only the plastic disposals equation. The secondary carbon emissions include the making of these plastic dyetubes.Transporting prewound soft packages into a container gives only 60% loading and this makes it still worse in terms of carbon emissions.Interestingly, the whole sewing thread industry across the world largely imports its spun polyester sewing thread yarns out of China on these dyetubes .
The impact of non recylable plastic disposal from such an Industry would account to more then a Million Ton each year.
Where is Greenpeace???
Friday, March 26, 2010
SSM : Paradise Won, Paradise Lost.
SSM is perhaps the Best Winding Machine under the Sun or is it ?
However, with such a class of product, it has been into Red for the last two consecutive years. No wonder the CEO got changed this year. Shareholders don't listen to impeding conditions and only want to see the growth trajectory.
FMCG companies, Banks, MNC, etc etc each of them year after year try to show growth to keep the shareholders pleased. No matter, how much the books have to be cooked or what funny things need to be done, otherwise the managers life is miserable. AIG, GM, Citi Bank, Enron, and now Toyoda have all shown that relatively risky decision are taken to keep the stock market in good humor for their stocks.
This reminds me of my own personal experience, when I first presented my budget for my little business and had shown some 9% growth over the previous year. I had a brilliant boss, ( in fact I had the privilege of working with many brilliant bosses, I must admit, each of them better then the other ) who advised me Atul, Future is not always Previous Year + 10%, but it is something which will show exponential growth. I did that year, 100% over my budget and he has a President created history for the company for his full business.
Now, the above story relates to the Power of Thinking. Wherein great managers do not move the company incrementally, but exponentially.
SSM was such a success story, where Beat Siegrist, ex CEO, created exponential growth for the company. He moved further to manage other businesses, and Herr Nadalini took the process forward, however, after Beat and then Nadalini departure never could get the company back to the same acceleration.
Let us dig into this interesting Case Study.
SSM specializes in Winding Machines and at one point of time, it was Rewinding Machines, Soft Package Winders, Assembly Winders, Gassing machines and later added Air Covering Machines. Then went in to take over Stahle and Hacoba.
SSM was one of the first winding machine makers to make a modular machine, where each position was like independent machine, precision winding technology for the first time came in for spun yarns, speeds went up from 400 metres per minute to 800 metres per minute or still higher. And above all the machine was rather simple and would make a very nice final package.
SSM had product offerings for both Filament yarns and Spun yarns. The Filament machine was any time much better with its flexible traverse and flexible crossing angle , and could run soft, rewinding or whatever application required winding. Spun machines had a propeller traverse and this was also an interesting change from the old system of wire guide or drums. The world flirted with these machines. If it was winding, then it was SSM. Fadis was a distant second and then there was no one.
SSM was a virtual monopoly as far as good winders were concerned across the globe. And when a company slips into this stage, it only breeds complacency and over confidence in its management. This is what happened to SSM. After having innovated and positioned itself on the Top, it forgot that, competition is always tracking the success and redefining itself.
It also forgot that the honey moon with the innovation is only for a limited period, then market wants the next innovation. Which SSM never planned.
Now, before I take up competition and what it did to SSM, let me analyze for the reader, whether the innovative technologies actually passed the Viability Threshold for the user or was it the hype of the brand.
Soft Package Winder for filament yarns : As a machine and its design, PW1 and now PW2 is a very nice machine, perhaps the best of the Horses, SSM has and it later successfully changed it to PW6 and made the spun yarn run on the same machines, which was quite ingenious and intelligent.
Viability Threshold Test : At a certain price, this machine was great. However, given that texturized yarns, which are the largest of the filament yarns, that get dyed, this was not the Ideal solution in terms of investment.
DTY yarns are by far the easiest to dye and a simple soft package winder, converted out of the take up of a texturizing machine, which Lohia or Himson sold in India and no other company in the rest of the world was the best solution for this application.
These machines would run at 800 to 900 metres per minute and had a texturizing take up, which means, a dyer could actually take up large packages and get a much higher effieceny in yarn dyeing . These machines are at crazy low prices. but again Lohia and Himson were nowhere to be mapped as a potential threat to this product line. So SSM enjoyed the position and Fadis was close second. It will not take long before Barmag finds out this application or Indian companies realize the potential of their winder.
SSM still is not aware of this threat, but is the biggest threat in this segment , when it comes to passing the Viability Threshold. With Stahle in its fold, SSM should quickly bring this model forward. However, for certain applications like Nylon or viscose yarns, or flat yarns or rewinding to pineapple cones , PW2 is still the best solution without a comparable technology.
Second is the spun yarn soft winder : Which is now PW6. Actually for spun yarns, as long as a dyer uses Mantex Dyesprings, there is absolutely no use of a precision winder. A good random winder is more then enough investment.
Visit any Japanese yarn dyeing plant and most of these have only random winder.
However, my favorite is always the example of Pacific Textiles ( with its visionary Technical Director, Dr Clemant Lam,) in Hong Kong, with its plants in Southern China and Sri Lanka and is now adding a plant in Bangladesh. This company has one of the best and large yarn dyeing and exports to US Top Brands. I tried many many times to sell a precision winder to him and he was unequivocal in saying that as long as a company uses MANTEX DYESPRINGS, there is never any need for a precision winder. Because Mantex Dyesprings bring in the same functionality of Density equalization , what precision winders will do with large investments.
And, I could not agree with him anymore. But then it needs the conviction and expertize of a Dyer Like Dr Clement Lam to run a dye house. Dr Clement Lam did his doctorate from UMIST UK and has 30+ years of experience in running a dyehouse. So, it is not just the enthusiasm to avoid a precision winder, but the expertize and genius of a dyer to use the optimal solution.
Therefore the PW6 actually does not pass the Viability Thrshold Test, however, till the world realizes , PW 6 still has a potential. But again as a machine, it is a very nice and versatile machine. Only if it was clubbed with MANTEX DYESPRINGS, it would have added the benefit of density equalization, expanded capacity of dyeing without additional capital outlay and lowered the operational cost of dyeing. I wonder, why did SSM, remove the presentation , it had for dyesprings along with its soft package winding machines. Atleast, there the Viability Threshold was borderline.
Assembly Winder : SSM failed in this segment. When I say failed, not that the machine failed, but the investment could never justify the viability threshold. None of its engineers could convince the buyer that a smaller pot diameter in twisting was the key to the investment into precision winder. ( Later, we will see, how the competition used this tool to corner and grow manifold) However, in Europe and in South America, it managed clubbing its drum winder as the solution.
Gassing Machines : The Investment Viability Threshold was not important, as the solutions were either Ritte or SSM and SSM is anytime a good choice.
Air Covering Machines : An excellent extension to winding , but was wrongly priced. Adding a few rollers and room for air jet does not make a machine 50% more expensive then the standard winder. SSM created its own barrier in viability. A very nice market, which could have been exploited with sensible pricing was lost with wrong pricing decision. SSM could have flooded the market with this product, but concentrated on the wrong segment and ofcourse a wrong price.
Re-winders etc have limited markets, so we will not discuss the threshold.
Stahle and Hacoba : No comments on viability threshold, because I always considered both these product lines superfluous to SSM.
Stahle is a niche machine, but the fact that the product had a limited market, the company went bankrupt. And was more synergistic for Barmag , then SSM.
SSM had no experience in texturizing and to start venturing into this segment would take a long learning curve. And now with Nylon as a focus of SSM for this machine is again deviating from its original niche.
Hacoba was again a sewing thread segment, which is a fragmented market, except for Coats , A&E and few more European players, the viability is doubtful. However, here again, there is atleast a room for growth in this market at sensible prices, given that garment manufacturing investment is increasing on year to year basis.
To sum up , the viability threshold for each of the product line is questionable, so as and when competition attacks, the chances of sales slipping away are highest.
This is exactly what happened to SSM. Let us now study the competition and its influence .
First Error:
SSM segmented the markets with its product applications and not as per the Industry Segment, which is to say, winders for knitters, winders for towel makers, winders for spinners, winders for Polyester plants, winders for home furnishing companies, winders for elastic makers, silk winders, winders for narrow fabric makers, winders for metallic yarns, winders for Industrial Yarns, winders for Technical Textiles and winders for special applications.
The result was that the sales team would only focus on the dyeing and sometimes rewinding segment of the industry. They could not travel beyond and see that the global industry was very well segmented by Product and not by application. If you visit the website of SSM, then it is like a notice board, ( Actually more like a railway time table ) where one should find his application, it is not about solutions for knitters, dyers, weavers, etc etc. Until and unless you are a textile engineer, you cannot spot the machine required for your application. Knowing well that most of the knitting, weaving and such post spinning areas are fragmented and medium sized companies, where the owner does not know, what is long staple or short staple or elastene, he quickly abandon and moves past and calls the local winder supplier to help him with his requirement.
Knitter would need air covering and may need rewinder and may need soft package winder and may be some special application machine.
So, if they had a sales rep, who was attacking only knitters, then one segment was already covered.
Similarly for weaver, there was a rewinder, because one and every weaver has left out packages and he needs a 6 spindle winder and if it has length measurement, then it is like sone pe suhaga. ( Gold Plated ). Therefore a special winder called " Weavers Delight " was not there. Only if a weaver would approach the machine maker and ask for such a winder, SSM would quickly offer one of the rewinder. But , if would have posted on the net, Weavers Delight, Price starts Euro 9990 for 6 spindles, then it would have created a whole new market for a very large untapped weaving segment. ( But this is one segment, no winding maker has exploited )
The extension of similar segment would open opportunities which were never linked to the product.
What I love about FMCG is that they have sales rep who is all the time in the field and visiting customers . And these sales reps are very low salaried and have very high incentives and the qualification is only enough to track the opportunity. The sales, anyway the manager would ensure. This concept is not there in Industrial Marketing .
Thus with a channel marketing of Agents, the way of marketing of each and every machine maker is spotting new projects , replacment and expansion projects. It was never about expanding the market itself.
The result is that SSM is now perceived as a Soft Package winder and Rewinder company. If the Industry segment finds a solution for itself in the winding offerings of SSM, then it is lucky for SSM, otherwise, it did never spot the opportunity itself.
Second Error : Under Estimating The Competition.
In markets, where capital goods industry is well developed, the competition profiling has to be very rigorous. Say for China and India, the situation for SSM is not the same as in Egypt, Bangladesh, Central Asia or S. America.
China, Taiwan, S.Korea and India on account of their highly Industrialized positions have the competence to track the global technologies and quickly bring forward a competing solution. No matter, how much foul is cried for the Copying, the reality is that the business in these countries is a real challenge for any machine maker. And to sell into such an environment, one needs a very aggressive sales positioning , as these are also some of the worlds largest markets . And interestingly , Indian, Chinese, Taiwanese and S.Koreans, then do not limit themselves only to their own domestic markets, they become regional and later global players.
SSM did succeed in China, but in reality, it was majorly in the South region, which was again the investments from Hong kong or in Hangzhou and some other small areas, where there was Taiwan investments. For all the other areas, it had marginal success, but still not so bad. In rest of China, it was the brand " Switzerland" that would sell and not SSM. ( Selling machines into China is another long story, I will write a blog soon)
In India, it did quite well, till a leading Indian winding maker started challenging the SSM product line. Year 2002, ( I had left SSM channel partner at this time ) the competition first found the gap in the spinning sector of SSM, and quickly moved forward to take away this segment. The irony was that SSM did not even know, what was happening in the market and before my departure, I had very strongly advised the sales manager that the southern region rep was extremely weak and he should not depend on him. They ignored my warnings and the result was that within 6 months, competition had sold around 500 spindles and within one year, they sold 1000 spindles, thereafter there was no looking back for the competition. The success was the effort of one single man in competition and failure of one single man in SSM. Despite SSM having placed its own sales manager alongside the sales rep, the quality and skill required to stop the competition was missing.
Competition is " Peass " a winding maker in India since last 40 years, so it is a strong brand and for them to capture the rest of the market was not difficult at all. However, the story did not end here. In SE Asia, I took over the marketing of this brand and for me it was very easy to sell, given that I knew the weaknesses of SSM. This meant, India and SE Asia was marginalized. Other markets like Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, West Africa and little in S. America were also quick to find value in this brand.
By the year 2007, Peass was at ITMA and there, it was now a run away success. The world had seen an Indian company with competitive offerings. And ironically the competition was always willing to tie up with SSM to find a common ground for success, but the opportunity was more seen by Schlafhorst and ultimately this company is now Peass- Schlafhorst . And what can be more interesting, that only division which makes profits in Oerlikon is Peass -Schlafhorst.
The lesson is " Never Underestimate The Competition "
The biggest failure of SSM was not about the competition low prices. But for SSM to have not been able to visualize that competition had only and only one product and all it required was to place a fighter brand at the same price band and kill the competition. However, this kind of foresight was never there in the management. SSM was in the same vicious circle of low price versus high price, as I wrote in my last blog.
Third Error: Not Exploiting the Modular Concept
The beauty of modular concept was that one never had to invest heavily and hence the smallest machine of less then chf 10,000 should have been targeted to one and every application area and industry segment. In fact, if chf 5000 was possible, then make it only 3 spindles and shove the machine to all of them. Many many of them would have then gone into extend the machine and the customer base of SSM would have gone up manifold.
We have already seen that as long as the value of product is low, everyone tries it for whatever it may be worth. Further, feels pride of owning a Swiss machine. It is all about getting a person started and once having tasted, he automatically comes back.
Fourth Error : Lack of Innovation
Herr SSM, Innovation is not about adding UPS to avoid a ring on the soft package, or adding a digitens or tensiso, or presitens or lubitex . The customer is only making simple yarn, which is most of the time is an input to the next process and any of these application is not making any difference to the customers revenue stream. Market values these as standard supplies for machine differentiation. These are cosmetic innovations. Like applying lipstick to a pig. But is still a Pig. ( Famously told by Obama )
SSM did not have any Textile Technologist on its board or management. The result was that, it could not ever find any further industry solutions with its product offerings.
Air Covering or the Slub attachment is a good application , but the thought process could not be taken further.
Herr SSM, if the Japanese can make MVS and shrink the process of simplex, ring spinning and winding, then they could see beyond the usual. Similarly winding is only a secondary application ( whether soft or rewinding or assembly winding ) and not a primary output , so its value will never be judged by the industry, till you could find primary applications like air covering.
Let me list out for you many such applications, where the value of winding machine changes from a secondary machine to a primary machine.
Herr SSM, hope you recall the famous ad campign of UBS bank.
What you see as winders, we see as potential Sizing Machine.
It does not take in 21st century "n" number or rollers to size cotton yarns, but it takes a smart resin application on the winder to make it strong enough to weave the yarn. We therefore see winder as the condensed smart sizing machine.
We see winder as the yarn dyeing machines condensing dyeing, drying and winding.
We see winders as the Machine changing normal tenacity yarns to High Tenacity yarns and give solution to technical textiles.
We see winders as the solution to make comingled and speciality yarns.
We see winders making Industrial yarns. Twisting and winding togather.
Making of Industrial yarns : There was no technology to make high deniers beyond 1100 deniers and I have now developed winders to make upto 5000 deniers and would come out with yarns upto 100,000 deniers soon. I will show these yarns in Bandungtex.
We see winders as Twist setting and conditioning machines.
Conditioned yarns on winder : See my product at Bandung Tex.
Nevertheless, you can buy all the above machine "application" patents from me.
We see winders as the yarn hairiness removal solutions and not gassing machines as the solution. See my yarns developed out of winder at Bandung Tex exhibition.
So, what you see as Winders, we see Technology.
The biggest opportunity of Innovation was when the world moved to compact spinning. SSM did not spot the opportunity that yarn hairiness was a forte of SSM and it could duck in the fire box into its winders or offer the fire box to the autoconers. Rieter and others made the best out of it.
Herr SSM, it needs the genius of a Textile Technologist, besides the management to run a technology oriented machine company.
In a world of Knowledge economy, it is the knowledge which is bringing about value to the organization, the commodity time is gone.
If Nokia can take away the market of canon and sony on camera and become the largest selling camera in the world, then it has silently intruded into the domain of camera makers and captured the global market.
It is upto you to see winders as sizing , industrial yarns, conditioning, twisting etc etc as your Brainware or be contented with fighting head on with other winders.
If only IBM would have seen the PC market rightly, it would have not collapsed on its mainframes.
Conventional Machines are like PC makers, the world will see innovative designers, who would sell designs on the internet and assemblers will make machines. It is time, that SSM changes and moves forwards and be the provider of the core components to these assemblers. Winding machine is all about the winding head, rest does not matter, any machine shop will do it for you anywhere in the world.
If the Japanese can fully make a machine in Japan itself and yet be successful, then moving production to China is not the solution. The solution is to create an assembler in India, China, etc etc and sent him the winding head .
And for technologies, until you really have technology geeks,, this is too big a dream to capture. I don't see that subtlety in SSM or for that matter in any European machine maker. This is what is "Innovating the Future ".
Well I am being arrogant here, but then there is no other person under the sun, who knows winding and its markets better then me.
Herr SSM, in the Indian subcontinent, we have a saying. " Jo Jita Wo Sikander " ( One who wins is Alexender the Great " and I will make an extension to it, " Jo Hara Wo Chukander " ( Who Looses is a cucumber )
Herr SSM, when your sales turnover in the year 2009 slipped from 82 million to 38 million with losses of 7 million CHF, Peass turnover moved up from 16 million to 22 million CHF and its profitability could have sent Zurich stock market to frenzy with its stock, had it been listed there.
Bitte lesen sie dies für die Möglichkeiten zur SSM und nicht als Kritik.
Aufweidersehen. Kunder ist immer richticg.
However, with such a class of product, it has been into Red for the last two consecutive years. No wonder the CEO got changed this year. Shareholders don't listen to impeding conditions and only want to see the growth trajectory.
FMCG companies, Banks, MNC, etc etc each of them year after year try to show growth to keep the shareholders pleased. No matter, how much the books have to be cooked or what funny things need to be done, otherwise the managers life is miserable. AIG, GM, Citi Bank, Enron, and now Toyoda have all shown that relatively risky decision are taken to keep the stock market in good humor for their stocks.
This reminds me of my own personal experience, when I first presented my budget for my little business and had shown some 9% growth over the previous year. I had a brilliant boss, ( in fact I had the privilege of working with many brilliant bosses, I must admit, each of them better then the other ) who advised me Atul, Future is not always Previous Year + 10%, but it is something which will show exponential growth. I did that year, 100% over my budget and he has a President created history for the company for his full business.
Now, the above story relates to the Power of Thinking. Wherein great managers do not move the company incrementally, but exponentially.
SSM was such a success story, where Beat Siegrist, ex CEO, created exponential growth for the company. He moved further to manage other businesses, and Herr Nadalini took the process forward, however, after Beat and then Nadalini departure never could get the company back to the same acceleration.
Let us dig into this interesting Case Study.
SSM specializes in Winding Machines and at one point of time, it was Rewinding Machines, Soft Package Winders, Assembly Winders, Gassing machines and later added Air Covering Machines. Then went in to take over Stahle and Hacoba.
SSM was one of the first winding machine makers to make a modular machine, where each position was like independent machine, precision winding technology for the first time came in for spun yarns, speeds went up from 400 metres per minute to 800 metres per minute or still higher. And above all the machine was rather simple and would make a very nice final package.
SSM had product offerings for both Filament yarns and Spun yarns. The Filament machine was any time much better with its flexible traverse and flexible crossing angle , and could run soft, rewinding or whatever application required winding. Spun machines had a propeller traverse and this was also an interesting change from the old system of wire guide or drums. The world flirted with these machines. If it was winding, then it was SSM. Fadis was a distant second and then there was no one.
SSM was a virtual monopoly as far as good winders were concerned across the globe. And when a company slips into this stage, it only breeds complacency and over confidence in its management. This is what happened to SSM. After having innovated and positioned itself on the Top, it forgot that, competition is always tracking the success and redefining itself.
It also forgot that the honey moon with the innovation is only for a limited period, then market wants the next innovation. Which SSM never planned.
Now, before I take up competition and what it did to SSM, let me analyze for the reader, whether the innovative technologies actually passed the Viability Threshold for the user or was it the hype of the brand.
Soft Package Winder for filament yarns : As a machine and its design, PW1 and now PW2 is a very nice machine, perhaps the best of the Horses, SSM has and it later successfully changed it to PW6 and made the spun yarn run on the same machines, which was quite ingenious and intelligent.
Viability Threshold Test : At a certain price, this machine was great. However, given that texturized yarns, which are the largest of the filament yarns, that get dyed, this was not the Ideal solution in terms of investment.
DTY yarns are by far the easiest to dye and a simple soft package winder, converted out of the take up of a texturizing machine, which Lohia or Himson sold in India and no other company in the rest of the world was the best solution for this application.
These machines would run at 800 to 900 metres per minute and had a texturizing take up, which means, a dyer could actually take up large packages and get a much higher effieceny in yarn dyeing . These machines are at crazy low prices. but again Lohia and Himson were nowhere to be mapped as a potential threat to this product line. So SSM enjoyed the position and Fadis was close second. It will not take long before Barmag finds out this application or Indian companies realize the potential of their winder.
SSM still is not aware of this threat, but is the biggest threat in this segment , when it comes to passing the Viability Threshold. With Stahle in its fold, SSM should quickly bring this model forward. However, for certain applications like Nylon or viscose yarns, or flat yarns or rewinding to pineapple cones , PW2 is still the best solution without a comparable technology.
Second is the spun yarn soft winder : Which is now PW6. Actually for spun yarns, as long as a dyer uses Mantex Dyesprings, there is absolutely no use of a precision winder. A good random winder is more then enough investment.
Visit any Japanese yarn dyeing plant and most of these have only random winder.
However, my favorite is always the example of Pacific Textiles ( with its visionary Technical Director, Dr Clemant Lam,) in Hong Kong, with its plants in Southern China and Sri Lanka and is now adding a plant in Bangladesh. This company has one of the best and large yarn dyeing and exports to US Top Brands. I tried many many times to sell a precision winder to him and he was unequivocal in saying that as long as a company uses MANTEX DYESPRINGS, there is never any need for a precision winder. Because Mantex Dyesprings bring in the same functionality of Density equalization , what precision winders will do with large investments.
And, I could not agree with him anymore. But then it needs the conviction and expertize of a Dyer Like Dr Clement Lam to run a dye house. Dr Clement Lam did his doctorate from UMIST UK and has 30+ years of experience in running a dyehouse. So, it is not just the enthusiasm to avoid a precision winder, but the expertize and genius of a dyer to use the optimal solution.
Therefore the PW6 actually does not pass the Viability Thrshold Test, however, till the world realizes , PW 6 still has a potential. But again as a machine, it is a very nice and versatile machine. Only if it was clubbed with MANTEX DYESPRINGS, it would have added the benefit of density equalization, expanded capacity of dyeing without additional capital outlay and lowered the operational cost of dyeing. I wonder, why did SSM, remove the presentation , it had for dyesprings along with its soft package winding machines. Atleast, there the Viability Threshold was borderline.
Assembly Winder : SSM failed in this segment. When I say failed, not that the machine failed, but the investment could never justify the viability threshold. None of its engineers could convince the buyer that a smaller pot diameter in twisting was the key to the investment into precision winder. ( Later, we will see, how the competition used this tool to corner and grow manifold) However, in Europe and in South America, it managed clubbing its drum winder as the solution.
Gassing Machines : The Investment Viability Threshold was not important, as the solutions were either Ritte or SSM and SSM is anytime a good choice.
Air Covering Machines : An excellent extension to winding , but was wrongly priced. Adding a few rollers and room for air jet does not make a machine 50% more expensive then the standard winder. SSM created its own barrier in viability. A very nice market, which could have been exploited with sensible pricing was lost with wrong pricing decision. SSM could have flooded the market with this product, but concentrated on the wrong segment and ofcourse a wrong price.
Re-winders etc have limited markets, so we will not discuss the threshold.
Stahle and Hacoba : No comments on viability threshold, because I always considered both these product lines superfluous to SSM.
Stahle is a niche machine, but the fact that the product had a limited market, the company went bankrupt. And was more synergistic for Barmag , then SSM.
SSM had no experience in texturizing and to start venturing into this segment would take a long learning curve. And now with Nylon as a focus of SSM for this machine is again deviating from its original niche.
Hacoba was again a sewing thread segment, which is a fragmented market, except for Coats , A&E and few more European players, the viability is doubtful. However, here again, there is atleast a room for growth in this market at sensible prices, given that garment manufacturing investment is increasing on year to year basis.
To sum up , the viability threshold for each of the product line is questionable, so as and when competition attacks, the chances of sales slipping away are highest.
This is exactly what happened to SSM. Let us now study the competition and its influence .
First Error:
SSM segmented the markets with its product applications and not as per the Industry Segment, which is to say, winders for knitters, winders for towel makers, winders for spinners, winders for Polyester plants, winders for home furnishing companies, winders for elastic makers, silk winders, winders for narrow fabric makers, winders for metallic yarns, winders for Industrial Yarns, winders for Technical Textiles and winders for special applications.
The result was that the sales team would only focus on the dyeing and sometimes rewinding segment of the industry. They could not travel beyond and see that the global industry was very well segmented by Product and not by application. If you visit the website of SSM, then it is like a notice board, ( Actually more like a railway time table ) where one should find his application, it is not about solutions for knitters, dyers, weavers, etc etc. Until and unless you are a textile engineer, you cannot spot the machine required for your application. Knowing well that most of the knitting, weaving and such post spinning areas are fragmented and medium sized companies, where the owner does not know, what is long staple or short staple or elastene, he quickly abandon and moves past and calls the local winder supplier to help him with his requirement.
Knitter would need air covering and may need rewinder and may need soft package winder and may be some special application machine.
So, if they had a sales rep, who was attacking only knitters, then one segment was already covered.
Similarly for weaver, there was a rewinder, because one and every weaver has left out packages and he needs a 6 spindle winder and if it has length measurement, then it is like sone pe suhaga. ( Gold Plated ). Therefore a special winder called " Weavers Delight " was not there. Only if a weaver would approach the machine maker and ask for such a winder, SSM would quickly offer one of the rewinder. But , if would have posted on the net, Weavers Delight, Price starts Euro 9990 for 6 spindles, then it would have created a whole new market for a very large untapped weaving segment. ( But this is one segment, no winding maker has exploited )
The extension of similar segment would open opportunities which were never linked to the product.
What I love about FMCG is that they have sales rep who is all the time in the field and visiting customers . And these sales reps are very low salaried and have very high incentives and the qualification is only enough to track the opportunity. The sales, anyway the manager would ensure. This concept is not there in Industrial Marketing .
Thus with a channel marketing of Agents, the way of marketing of each and every machine maker is spotting new projects , replacment and expansion projects. It was never about expanding the market itself.
The result is that SSM is now perceived as a Soft Package winder and Rewinder company. If the Industry segment finds a solution for itself in the winding offerings of SSM, then it is lucky for SSM, otherwise, it did never spot the opportunity itself.
Second Error : Under Estimating The Competition.
In markets, where capital goods industry is well developed, the competition profiling has to be very rigorous. Say for China and India, the situation for SSM is not the same as in Egypt, Bangladesh, Central Asia or S. America.
China, Taiwan, S.Korea and India on account of their highly Industrialized positions have the competence to track the global technologies and quickly bring forward a competing solution. No matter, how much foul is cried for the Copying, the reality is that the business in these countries is a real challenge for any machine maker. And to sell into such an environment, one needs a very aggressive sales positioning , as these are also some of the worlds largest markets . And interestingly , Indian, Chinese, Taiwanese and S.Koreans, then do not limit themselves only to their own domestic markets, they become regional and later global players.
SSM did succeed in China, but in reality, it was majorly in the South region, which was again the investments from Hong kong or in Hangzhou and some other small areas, where there was Taiwan investments. For all the other areas, it had marginal success, but still not so bad. In rest of China, it was the brand " Switzerland" that would sell and not SSM. ( Selling machines into China is another long story, I will write a blog soon)
In India, it did quite well, till a leading Indian winding maker started challenging the SSM product line. Year 2002, ( I had left SSM channel partner at this time ) the competition first found the gap in the spinning sector of SSM, and quickly moved forward to take away this segment. The irony was that SSM did not even know, what was happening in the market and before my departure, I had very strongly advised the sales manager that the southern region rep was extremely weak and he should not depend on him. They ignored my warnings and the result was that within 6 months, competition had sold around 500 spindles and within one year, they sold 1000 spindles, thereafter there was no looking back for the competition. The success was the effort of one single man in competition and failure of one single man in SSM. Despite SSM having placed its own sales manager alongside the sales rep, the quality and skill required to stop the competition was missing.
Competition is " Peass " a winding maker in India since last 40 years, so it is a strong brand and for them to capture the rest of the market was not difficult at all. However, the story did not end here. In SE Asia, I took over the marketing of this brand and for me it was very easy to sell, given that I knew the weaknesses of SSM. This meant, India and SE Asia was marginalized. Other markets like Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, West Africa and little in S. America were also quick to find value in this brand.
By the year 2007, Peass was at ITMA and there, it was now a run away success. The world had seen an Indian company with competitive offerings. And ironically the competition was always willing to tie up with SSM to find a common ground for success, but the opportunity was more seen by Schlafhorst and ultimately this company is now Peass- Schlafhorst . And what can be more interesting, that only division which makes profits in Oerlikon is Peass -Schlafhorst.
The lesson is " Never Underestimate The Competition "
The biggest failure of SSM was not about the competition low prices. But for SSM to have not been able to visualize that competition had only and only one product and all it required was to place a fighter brand at the same price band and kill the competition. However, this kind of foresight was never there in the management. SSM was in the same vicious circle of low price versus high price, as I wrote in my last blog.
Third Error: Not Exploiting the Modular Concept
The beauty of modular concept was that one never had to invest heavily and hence the smallest machine of less then chf 10,000 should have been targeted to one and every application area and industry segment. In fact, if chf 5000 was possible, then make it only 3 spindles and shove the machine to all of them. Many many of them would have then gone into extend the machine and the customer base of SSM would have gone up manifold.
We have already seen that as long as the value of product is low, everyone tries it for whatever it may be worth. Further, feels pride of owning a Swiss machine. It is all about getting a person started and once having tasted, he automatically comes back.
Fourth Error : Lack of Innovation
Herr SSM, Innovation is not about adding UPS to avoid a ring on the soft package, or adding a digitens or tensiso, or presitens or lubitex . The customer is only making simple yarn, which is most of the time is an input to the next process and any of these application is not making any difference to the customers revenue stream. Market values these as standard supplies for machine differentiation. These are cosmetic innovations. Like applying lipstick to a pig. But is still a Pig. ( Famously told by Obama )
SSM did not have any Textile Technologist on its board or management. The result was that, it could not ever find any further industry solutions with its product offerings.
Air Covering or the Slub attachment is a good application , but the thought process could not be taken further.
Herr SSM, if the Japanese can make MVS and shrink the process of simplex, ring spinning and winding, then they could see beyond the usual. Similarly winding is only a secondary application ( whether soft or rewinding or assembly winding ) and not a primary output , so its value will never be judged by the industry, till you could find primary applications like air covering.
Let me list out for you many such applications, where the value of winding machine changes from a secondary machine to a primary machine.
Herr SSM, hope you recall the famous ad campign of UBS bank.
You see a child playing with his grandfather, we see succession planning.
What you see as winders, we see as potential Sizing Machine.
It does not take in 21st century "n" number or rollers to size cotton yarns, but it takes a smart resin application on the winder to make it strong enough to weave the yarn. We therefore see winder as the condensed smart sizing machine.
We see winder as the yarn dyeing machines condensing dyeing, drying and winding.
We see winders as the Machine changing normal tenacity yarns to High Tenacity yarns and give solution to technical textiles.
We see winders as the solution to make comingled and speciality yarns.
We see winders making Industrial yarns. Twisting and winding togather.
Making of Industrial yarns : There was no technology to make high deniers beyond 1100 deniers and I have now developed winders to make upto 5000 deniers and would come out with yarns upto 100,000 deniers soon. I will show these yarns in Bandungtex.
We see winders as Twist setting and conditioning machines.
Conditioned yarns on winder : See my product at Bandung Tex.
Nevertheless, you can buy all the above machine "application" patents from me.
We see winders as the yarn hairiness removal solutions and not gassing machines as the solution. See my yarns developed out of winder at Bandung Tex exhibition.
So, what you see as Winders, we see Technology.
The biggest opportunity of Innovation was when the world moved to compact spinning. SSM did not spot the opportunity that yarn hairiness was a forte of SSM and it could duck in the fire box into its winders or offer the fire box to the autoconers. Rieter and others made the best out of it.
Herr SSM, it needs the genius of a Textile Technologist, besides the management to run a technology oriented machine company.
In a world of Knowledge economy, it is the knowledge which is bringing about value to the organization, the commodity time is gone.
If Nokia can take away the market of canon and sony on camera and become the largest selling camera in the world, then it has silently intruded into the domain of camera makers and captured the global market.
It is upto you to see winders as sizing , industrial yarns, conditioning, twisting etc etc as your Brainware or be contented with fighting head on with other winders.
If only IBM would have seen the PC market rightly, it would have not collapsed on its mainframes.
Conventional Machines are like PC makers, the world will see innovative designers, who would sell designs on the internet and assemblers will make machines. It is time, that SSM changes and moves forwards and be the provider of the core components to these assemblers. Winding machine is all about the winding head, rest does not matter, any machine shop will do it for you anywhere in the world.
If the Japanese can fully make a machine in Japan itself and yet be successful, then moving production to China is not the solution. The solution is to create an assembler in India, China, etc etc and sent him the winding head .
And for technologies, until you really have technology geeks,, this is too big a dream to capture. I don't see that subtlety in SSM or for that matter in any European machine maker. This is what is "Innovating the Future ".
Well I am being arrogant here, but then there is no other person under the sun, who knows winding and its markets better then me.
Herr SSM, in the Indian subcontinent, we have a saying. " Jo Jita Wo Sikander " ( One who wins is Alexender the Great " and I will make an extension to it, " Jo Hara Wo Chukander " ( Who Looses is a cucumber )
Herr SSM, when your sales turnover in the year 2009 slipped from 82 million to 38 million with losses of 7 million CHF, Peass turnover moved up from 16 million to 22 million CHF and its profitability could have sent Zurich stock market to frenzy with its stock, had it been listed there.
Bitte lesen sie dies für die Möglichkeiten zur SSM und nicht als Kritik.
Aufweidersehen. Kunder ist immer richticg.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Textile Machines - Europe Does Not Know, How To Sell.
Europeans were once the Best Machine Makers in the world. However Textile Machine Makers, now are struggling to keep afloat.
Textile Machines in Europe have been facing a challenge for the last 30 years , competing against Asian Machines. Many of them collapsed and went bankrupt, as they could not compete against the Asian Tigers. Example : Then, Scholl, ICBT, RPR,and then Oerlikon managed to save many a bankrupt companies and is now itself struggling to survive its Textile Machine Division. ( First error, it should have called it Textile Technology Division )
One big reason for the collapse of Textile Machine Industry in Europe is that they don't know How To Sell Textile Machines into Asia. Which by far is the largest consumer for their product lines.
Textiles is something, where the technology of the process is loaded onto the machine. Say, yarn has to be drafted to make it finer, then Drafting machines will have the set of speeding rollers.
Since, the Process Technology is itself so rudimentary that making such machines is very simple. How then a European Maker ever compete with Asian cost. . If you are a good engineer, then you can design a machine in your workshop, buy all accessories from standard suppliers and start your own textile mill , specially the spinning machines, ( other then auto coners) . If you buy a Chinese Ring Frame, then actually other then the main skeleton, they would offer you all the other parts made in Germany or from any of your favorite supplier . Which means, if you can ask the local workshop to make a ring frame skeleton, then everything else is available off the shelf. So, why the hell pay Euro 150 per spindle for a ring frame. Make one for yourself at a price of Euro 50 per spindle or still better take from China @ Euro 40 per spindle.
I am giving this example to understand that when Textile Machines made in Europe have to compete against such machine makers, then one has to map the competition and the customers carefully. European Textile Machine Industry has failed miserably in retaining this business and most of it has migrated to Asia. Failure is not account of low cost manufacturing in Asia, but poor management skills of these machine makers.
While everything under the sun has the same issue, where Branded products are about double the price of self crafted or local crafted products, but when it comes to large investments, the selection is based on availability of funds, competitiveness of the company, customers it is serving, capability of the asset, incremental benefits of using a superior asset.
At the end one is running a business and not making a lifestyle statement. So the assets have to yield profits. And profit equation is an extremely complex equation.
If only the variables of a high investment machine directly linked to the profits are taken, then the first major cost comes is the cost of money, second the operational cost and the third is ,if such asset will make any significant improvement in the product quality, which will then fetch higher sales price or even if not higher sales price, at least his products will be the dominant player in the market.
If these 3 numbers are significant, then automatically the higher asset price is justified. And most of the time, none of the European Machine Maker is able to explain any of these three variables.
Secondly, the area of Technical Superiority of the Asset: Basic Technology of textiles itself is so rudimentary, that technical superiority is generally explained with very elementary features like providing some roller or giving a guide or some tensioner etc and this is so much cosmetic that it hardly is factored by the user as a significant technology input.
Third, the reliability of the machine : This is one area, where European machines are the best and this again no single European Sales Man ever projects STRONGLY to the user. Lately I had to reinforce a German Company to write in Block Capital, 120+ years of Technology, Made In Germany.
Fourth : Asian Culture : A continent, which is largely impoverished and is only now showing improvement. The attitudes of people is of Buying Low Priced products and later consolidating. Even the trained Textile Engineer carries his attitude that if he could save money by running a low priced asset, then he would be considered a Good Engineer. I have an expert dyer friend, who is now 66 and is a leading consultant to many a dyeing and finishing companies in Major textile zone in India .He repeatedly counsels the clients that , when it comes to Stenter, he would make run the Ahmadabad make and hence no need to spent Euro 400,000 for a German Machine. Though I will not agree one bit with him, but then that is the extension of the culture. Unless Machine Makers reinforce the market that this perception of High Cost is wrong , the attitude will be barrier for sale of European Machines. These Gate Keepers will not permit the machines to move further into the large middle segment of Textiles.
Fifth : No machine maker ever segments the market. Big company to small company to Industry wise segmentation, say Home Furnishings, Automotive weavers, Industrial Yarns, Commodity yarns, Specialized yarns, Medical Yarns, Sports Yarns, Dyed Yarns, knitting yarns, etc etc. Whatever products range they have, they would try and fit to all segments. No one thinks, ok, let me make a special brochure for Home Furnishing customers and design a machine, which has features suitable for coarse yarns,that are most used in Home Furnishing. Any case the machine is the same, but now it has some other additional features and has been Branded as Home Funrnishing Horse and is getting the attention it deserves from the customer. Eg: Yarns of size 8s count with 4 ply is a very specialized yarn and is mostly used by home burnishers. But there is no such machine exclusively that can be offered to the yarn spinner. If only Volkmann, could have called its Large Pot Dia machines as Home Furnishing Twisters and made a separate catalog and would have added some funny features to it, then it opens a new segment of market for itself. But what it does is to have one catalog, where all its models are listed and the pot diameter and the twist range and then it is upto to the customer to consider, that this is the best choice for his application. This is not marketing anyday.
Not realizing that Textile is still a fragmented industry and 99% of the industry is family business and 1% only is MNC or Coroporatized. So, the customer base is strictly family run businesses, where the owner of the plant is the final authority for each capital expenditure. And in such an environment , the general perceptions are more important then the asset itself. Unless your machine is perceived as the exclusive solution to a certain segment of market, it does not get the attention it needs.
Sixth : Technology : None of the machine makers has invested into upgrading the technology. If 18 th century was the Industrial revolution, then 21st century is the Digital revolution. The machines,which are designed in the 19th century are just about the same. Very little has changed. I once spoke to a Technical Adviser to Barmag and told him, why could he not design a machine, which would run at 3000 metres per minute and the usual stupid answer you get from everyone. But the Yarn should Run.
We are there to run the yarn, if you can make the machine run.
Barmag, a man made fibre machine maker who makes machines for FDY, running at 5000 metres per minute and the yarn does not break, is questioning that on texturizing , the yarn could not run at 3000 metres. If early texturizing machines has pin type texturizing, then moving to disc type texturizing was a technology advancement. But since then, no one ever moved further. Still the machines run with Disc and at speeds of 1500 metres maximum. Anycase , still better then 800 metres per minute in the year 1987. However, it needs to be noted, when I say Technology, it is not the speed. It is the process. Like Open End is a Technology by itself, Jet Spinning is a technology by itself, but when it comes to ring spinning, it still stands in time. If only a ring frame maker changed the system of drafting from aprons and cots to a false twister as in DTY machines and rather then cops added a winder , it would have made a new technology.
Today, Murata has taken over from Rieter by designing MVS machines and shrunk, simplex , spinning and winding to one machine. They have stolen the show. This is an example of investing into technology . But with Europe no such investments were made in technology, only in improving the speeds of the machine ITMA after ITMA. That is how they would measure the performance of their product designs. But the markets want better methods , larger variety in its offerings, besides higher productivity and lower cost of production.
Increasing speeds from ITMA to ITMA is incremental thinking. Adding cosmetic measures to show improvement is lazy thinking. And that is the reason, European machine makers fail and Asians make the same product much cheaper.
Seventh : I see Managers as that of Pre Internet Era and Post Internet Era. Pre Internet Era are those, who know how to connect to the internet and will sometime browse a few things and knows , how to make a presentation out of a computer and some basic skills. And then there are Post Internet Era managers, who use the Information Highway to explore the global developments and factor them quickly into their product offerings and exploit the opportunities. Internet is a source of Innovation, Design, Global Reach, Customers, Competitors, and smart positioning. Check the websites of each and every European machine maker and it is so shameful, that other then the catalog and some product description, the site does not travel anywhere. When the world is writing Blogs and directing one and every internet user to his product , even if it is only $100, here is a case, where 100,000$ machine seller has vague presence on the net. Many of them show up on 10 th page on Google Search. In a world, where every single information is searched by a click of button, no one goes to the 10th page to find a product offering. I have not seen one single blog by any sales manager for his product offerings.
The site does not make a lucid reading at all, it is not informal and friendly. A medium which should have been exploited brutally by the sales team on rampant dissemination of information has been left untouched. In times of Youtube, Facebook etc etc, Machine makers do not find any presence.
Eighth : Technical Seminars : Last year I attended a seminar conducted by Swiss Textile Machine Makers and it was such a shame. Swiss with companies like Rieter, Sulzer, SSM, etc etc and when it comes to making a presentation, it is usual stuff of Slide after slide explaining the machine.
For God sake, the whole world already knows that Swiss are the best machine makers in the world and they also know more of your machine, then what you would know.
It is now your opportunity to make a presentation and tell the customers, how you are more competitive in terms of investment, and how your technology can bring value to the customer and how your machines will make something so exclusive, which market has not seen.
Take some yarn samples and give the baby cones to most significant customers, create an euphoria of your brand, present stories of other customers and present anecdotes and jokes, so that the audience is not sleeping at least. One could see 90% of the audience were sleeping after the lunch and before the lunch they were waiting for the lunch break.
Other then one presentation of Rieter for his open end machines, all the others were pathetic.
Please Machine Maker Association, next time you hold a seminar, get the Top Business School professor to lecture on how to evaluate Capital Goods and how European Machines are cheaper then Asian machines. Because none of the sales managers of European Machine Maker knows, how to explain this simple fact.
Ninth : Skill Set: Since European Textile Industry collapsed 25 years ago, the skill of the sales manager who present the machines to the customers is highly skeptical. Most of these managers themselves are not either Textile Graduate, or they would have never worked in a textile plant or they are from another industry altogather and do not not understand the requirements of the customer. And even if there is a textile graduate, then the selling skills and above all management skills are highly questionable.
Not one single Sales Manager from Europe and I repeat here again that not one single sales manager has ever presented the case of DCF to the customer .Because he himself does not know, what is DCF.
Further, I am still not sure, if the Sales Manager understand the significance of Depreciation as a Tool of marketing. Depreciation is not just an accounting entry to avoid tax. It is the actual source of funds for the company, which it has build over the lifespan of the asset. So, it acts as a source of funds for the purchase of an asset and also acts as a source of tax deduction. Both these elements are never factored by the sales manager in his presentation. A profitable company paying taxes will rather buy an expensive equipment as long as it is tax neutral for him, besides the revenue stream generated out of the asset.
With such nice Business Schools in Europe, the least the machine makers should do is that before commissioning an engineer to field to sell a product worth 100,000$ . He should be sent to Business School for a short program on learning marketing of capital goods. ( Business School opportunity, to design a program for Industrial Product marketing )
Simple basic accounting models to evaluate a capital expenditure for comparison of machines like DCF is one prime tool .
European machine maker does not understand that the competition is not the machine and its quality, it is the low price. And low price cannot be competed all the time by talking only on High Features of Machine and quality of machines. It needs accounting numbers and accounting numbers clearly reflect that operational cost of using a higher investment asset is lower, then the higher investment is automatically justified. ( And in case the asset cannot show this number, then better such machine maker actually packs up, because there is no hope for him, competition knows no boundaries, it will travel right to the doorstep of such a maker ).
Hence, even if you are a high cost machine, it does not make any difference. Because the asset is paying for itself. Money is coming from borrowing . Market is paying the price and owner has the pride of using a European Machine. Higher price also means higher depreciation, which also means, for higher profit company, it is a tax guy who is paying for his machine and not him. This also means, until and unless a sales manager continuously monitors the Financial statement of each of the listed companies, and tracks the profitable ones, then he knows that these companies will for sure invest on accounts of available reserves .But these small fundamentals, only a management guy understands. Not a technical person.
I told once SSM marketing manager, actually your machines are much cheaper then Indian maker and he laughed at me, how can a machine of CHF 4000 Per spl be cheaper then a machine of USD 1300 per spl. But that is where is the BIG DIFFERENCE in sales comes (I will write this in another blog , when I compare SSM to Asian Winding Machine maker ) lately something similar happened. Volkmann lost order of around USD 1 Million to an Indian supplier. Peass Oerlikon asked me to help them out( as they are working togather with Volkmann China for the doubler winder ) and I spoke to the sales manager and he repeated the usual thing, our machines are 20% more expensive then the Indian machine and customer is not willing to give a higher price. Well, I told him, if he gives the contract to me, I will change the order in his favor with a simple arithmetic that his machine is actually cheaper then Indian. He pointed out that he was selling for 20 years and he knew his job. The guy never got back to me and USD1 Million sales gone to the Asian Company. This happens on daily basis.
( Hmmmmm, I am an Indian, so why support the European, let them live in blissful ignorance)
So, unless and until European Machine makers sent their front line sales man and back end Marketing guys to Business schools or hire management graduates, there is no hope for these companies, no matter what they keep doing. Because Asian machines are becoming better with each passing day and they would anyway be always cheaper. Transferring the manufacturing to China or India is not the best solution. As machine making does not need much of manpower.
Most of the machine is outsourced and outsourcing from Eastern Europe will still get you Certificate of Origin of Europe. So, why loose the strategic advantage of Made In Europe.
Further any company in Textile Machine business does not need more then a few designers, outsourced technologist, material manager, and some assembly technicians. Rest is all about making drawings and outsourcing the full machine. So, why should there be a high price to fight the low cost competition. Company should have more and more sales man, because each of this guy is at least getting business and is not a cost centre. All the others are cost centres.
Tenth : Channels of Marketing : Each and Every European machine maker under the sun, has agents and the sales in that particular country depends upon the performance of the agent. Profile these agents and you will find none of them knows the front of the machine to the back of the machine and is basically an escort service. If this is the quality of channel, then what results can one expect from this market.
This agent channel system itself is highly questionable.
It makes far more sense to have your sales rep in each country. Take a local sales guy and ask him to operate from his home. All Travel at actuals and all other expenses at actual. Expenses of hiring a person in Asia is much much lower then the frequent visit of the sales manager from the home country . Further a dedicated sales man is concentrating day and night and knows, if the joker does not get enough orders, he would not have his job. ( Of course this depends upon the volume of business in that country. Say for NZ, one would not keep a sales rep)
In a world, where information is first searched on the net, not one machine maker provides for "Get Customer, Be Rewarded " or similar scheme and for all you know, the damn competitor agent is sending information to you. Why not give Pay Pal vouchers for small denominations for each valuable opportunity and if the opportunity actually materializes, give the joker Euro 100 voucher, so that he looks for more such opportunities and also forwards your brand further. You would have created an automated channel, this way.
Provide for " Sent your Inquiry and get a T shirt" and you find the over enthusiastic plant manager sends the inquiry to you. Ask your sales rep to give him the T shirt, which you would buy in Indonesia for less then 1 $each.
Promotion : Most of the time, the local agent himself does not know, what opportunities are there, he has 10 agencies and his job is to submit the offers to the customers and follow up with a response.More then that , he does not know. Now for all English speaking customers, who are large corporate houses, and communicate directly with the company, the least the machine makers should do is to have a nice lady writing emails and sending newsletters and asking about any service or spares or any other help they need.
If small companies can have a call center doing this little job, why not pay some money to a call center in Philippines or India and ask them to contact the customers regularly. Ask your back office to design a quiz and forward to all the customers connected online and ask them, for the first 10 quick and correct answers, they would get a T Shirt with winner of MANTEX ( winks) or whatever your company name and in such a way, you are creating a brand value.
Intellectual challenges is very motivating for all technical people and they then get a chance to boost amongst the friends and colleagues that they won a prize from a European Machine Maker.
Regularly have Essay competition on What new would you like to have one your spinning or winding or dyeing machine and give one of them a Certificate that he provided a great input. Advertise the competition globally on the net , . All this cost very very little, but is much much better then spending millions of dollars on wasteful exhibitions.
Eleventh : When I first stared working for machine makers, I asked the chief engineer one day, why is that all machines are made in Green color. Well he did have a good answer, but after a few years, machines were in all the colors except Green. The next stage has come now. Machines needs beautiful pictures and department should look like a lively place of work, with whatever screen saver the customer wants ( In India, they will go for Pictures of their favorite Gods, huh ). Lately I asked Thies, why dont they make a rain forest picture on the vessels, so that if you step into the dyeing department, then you feel ,as if stepped in a rain forest.
Twelfth : It is a world of Knowledge economy. World has changed so much that young men now make millions of dollars before they are 30. In an age, where technology is changing so rampantly where in you buy a TV and it is out dated in 3 years, you buy a hand phone and it is outdated in 6 months, cars are changed within 3 years. And any other business accessory which can bring in efficiency and revenue is grabbed by the over hungry consumer.
Wealth positioning has changed. More money is now available with the the Asians, the next generation from the family owned businesses are far better educated and most of them are from top business schools. Textile is flourishing, consumption per GDP in each country across the world has gone up. Old Assets have to be changed in most countries across the world And even now, if Europe will not be able to sell, then there will never come a time again like this.
European machine makers have to realize that they have to educate the customer, that no more the machines are for 10 years or 20 years, it is maximum for 5 years. Because within 5 years, they would offer them a machine , which is twice the productivity of the current machine and hence the operational cost will be half and therefore they are tied up with a Technology supplier who would lead them into the future. They have to educate them that the residual value of a machine after 5 years of usage is still 50% against any Asian machine, which will not be even 25%. So, while working out a DCF, European machines are any day cheaper then any global machine maker. ( Why do I have to educate the Europeans for free)
Unlucky Number Thirteen : Pricing : Unless Europe chooses to keep Sensible pricing, the game is lost even before the match starts. Because already a high price perception exist and 90% of the middle segment, which is rather the large textile manufacturer never even floats an inquiry to the European Machine Maker.
If the whole world has seen that Low Cost Airlines sent State Carriers to bankruptcy, then the lesson to learn was that Atleast start filling your seats, ( Capacity of the plant with whatever price and then move to high priced seats, as the capacity fills ) Why not Put on the website, Price Starts at Euro xxx, which is anyway 10% cheaper then the Asian prices. The damn thing makes the person STARTED, he will least sent an inquiry and explore , what is this offer.
And after that it is your ingenuity to move him up the value chain or just close the deal and fill the capacity. ( Using Marginal Costing contribution as model of pricing formula, rather then keeping a price list and giving obscene discounts, the price list system has failed )
Fourteen :Historical Sales Analysis : I have never seen one single letter from the sales manager to the company, where they sold the machines 10 years back.
Writing that " We are pleased that our last machine , model no xxx sold to you in March 1999 is running successfully and on my last visit , I saw the machine was working at speeds of xxxx . While our machines are designed to surpass generations of usage and pridefully some of the grand chilren use our machines from the first generation.
However, in times of competitiveness, we would strongly recommend that you Budget in your upcoming Capital Budget the replacement of the machine with our New Model " Poogle " where the speeds have though not reached the speed of sound, yet are now double of your existing machine. Plus the technology has moved further and prices of our machines are dropping faster then the bombs in Afghanistan. This would be right time to invest , considering the growth patterns and general improvement in economy "
This makes the thinking process start for the company, because there is a document in front of him, which is showing that the Productivity going up by 50% and cost of production going down by 50% and since he has eaten away his depreciation, it is about time, he needs source of deprecation to keep the tax out of the balance sheet. Funds are anyway coming out of the Depreciation ledger, which he maintained sincerely.
Fifteen : Branding : Textile Machine Makers do not know, what is Branding. A company of 120 years and a company of 10 years old, both only talk about machines and equipments. Thies is a Brand and not a machine. Till the date, Thies keeps selling its machines as machines, it will get only commodity prices. The very day, it realizes, that they have a Brand and they follow the Brand principles, they would be on the Top of the world.
For my own brand, Mantex, I offer the customer, Mantex Dyed can be incorporated onto his final product going to the market. But no one single textile machine maker has ingenuity that he can allow the dyer to put on his Cones THIES DYED, European Technology or Monfront Stabilized, European Technology on his fabrics. This is a show me , talk loud world. Branding makes so much difference, that some day, if the customers of dyed yarns find clearly that Thies Dyed cones were better then xxx dyeing machine cones, then automatically the sales is secured for all times to come.
Imagine, Zara collar would read, - Mantex Dyed Technology- Because Mantex will be a brand related to environment, technology, quality, productivity . It will be extension of life style and no more an equipment.
Sixteen :Secondary Market : Browse the web and check out the number of used machines that get sold and it is mind boggling. There is a hidden opportunity there. Why not monitor these opportunities and offer them a used machine picked out of a Trade In new machine with another customer where ever you think, the customer is hooked to your competitor. This would also need continuous research on historical sales.
Last, my favorite machine maker in Europe is SSM, the one company for whom I have deep respect. This is one company which has shown profit year after year, though has the same challenges of fighting competition with half the price winders. Actually, it has lost out a large chunk of its market to an Indian company, which has now been taken over by Schlafhorst. However, still SSM is profitable. (What an irony of fate, I was writing this article on March 23 and SSM was holding its Annual Results conference . Pity that SSM sales dropped from 81.7 million CHF to 38.6 million CHF with losses of CHF 8.2 Milion , remark posted on March 26, 2010 )
The story of success ( No more now ) of SSM is more linked to one single man : Mr Beat Seigrist, INSEAD graduate, an ex McKinsey consultant and CEO for SSM till 2008, he changed the whole company from a simple machine maker to a Top Performing Swiss Company. At one time, I recall the shares of SSM were quoted at CHF 1400 and up at Zurich Exchange. He made the company market driven, changed the way, the business was done and repositioned the product lines, made sensible prices against old pricing system. Made a flexible organization and within no time SSM was a darling company of the stock exchange. The profitability was envy of many a giants in Europe.
The company still has good product lines, but .............., times changed, the product lines of SSM have again only shown incremental advantages and it is getting trapped into the same vicious cycle of other makers. SSM does not realize that winder is not just a winding machine. It is far too much more then soft winder and assembly winders in winding applications. Though air covering was a good product line, yet the extension of the same thought process never went further in the company. Simple again, the company does not have textile graduates , who can see beyond the application of soft, assembly, rewinding and air covering. It is also struggling against Asian maker on its conventional product lines and if it does not quickly bring the wisdom of Mr Beat Siegrist into the business, will see the same results as others. ( Ironical the day I wrote this blog, the same day SSM posted the inevitable.
Though, when it comes to selling, SSM has the same weaknesses as other machine makers. Wish Beat could have given them more time.
Textile Machines in Europe have been facing a challenge for the last 30 years , competing against Asian Machines. Many of them collapsed and went bankrupt, as they could not compete against the Asian Tigers. Example : Then, Scholl, ICBT, RPR,and then Oerlikon managed to save many a bankrupt companies and is now itself struggling to survive its Textile Machine Division. ( First error, it should have called it Textile Technology Division )
One big reason for the collapse of Textile Machine Industry in Europe is that they don't know How To Sell Textile Machines into Asia. Which by far is the largest consumer for their product lines.
Textiles is something, where the technology of the process is loaded onto the machine. Say, yarn has to be drafted to make it finer, then Drafting machines will have the set of speeding rollers.
Since, the Process Technology is itself so rudimentary that making such machines is very simple. How then a European Maker ever compete with Asian cost. . If you are a good engineer, then you can design a machine in your workshop, buy all accessories from standard suppliers and start your own textile mill , specially the spinning machines, ( other then auto coners) . If you buy a Chinese Ring Frame, then actually other then the main skeleton, they would offer you all the other parts made in Germany or from any of your favorite supplier . Which means, if you can ask the local workshop to make a ring frame skeleton, then everything else is available off the shelf. So, why the hell pay Euro 150 per spindle for a ring frame. Make one for yourself at a price of Euro 50 per spindle or still better take from China @ Euro 40 per spindle.
I am giving this example to understand that when Textile Machines made in Europe have to compete against such machine makers, then one has to map the competition and the customers carefully. European Textile Machine Industry has failed miserably in retaining this business and most of it has migrated to Asia. Failure is not account of low cost manufacturing in Asia, but poor management skills of these machine makers.
While everything under the sun has the same issue, where Branded products are about double the price of self crafted or local crafted products, but when it comes to large investments, the selection is based on availability of funds, competitiveness of the company, customers it is serving, capability of the asset, incremental benefits of using a superior asset.
At the end one is running a business and not making a lifestyle statement. So the assets have to yield profits. And profit equation is an extremely complex equation.
If only the variables of a high investment machine directly linked to the profits are taken, then the first major cost comes is the cost of money, second the operational cost and the third is ,if such asset will make any significant improvement in the product quality, which will then fetch higher sales price or even if not higher sales price, at least his products will be the dominant player in the market.
If these 3 numbers are significant, then automatically the higher asset price is justified. And most of the time, none of the European Machine Maker is able to explain any of these three variables.
Secondly, the area of Technical Superiority of the Asset: Basic Technology of textiles itself is so rudimentary, that technical superiority is generally explained with very elementary features like providing some roller or giving a guide or some tensioner etc and this is so much cosmetic that it hardly is factored by the user as a significant technology input.
Third, the reliability of the machine : This is one area, where European machines are the best and this again no single European Sales Man ever projects STRONGLY to the user. Lately I had to reinforce a German Company to write in Block Capital, 120+ years of Technology, Made In Germany.
Fourth : Asian Culture : A continent, which is largely impoverished and is only now showing improvement. The attitudes of people is of Buying Low Priced products and later consolidating. Even the trained Textile Engineer carries his attitude that if he could save money by running a low priced asset, then he would be considered a Good Engineer. I have an expert dyer friend, who is now 66 and is a leading consultant to many a dyeing and finishing companies in Major textile zone in India .He repeatedly counsels the clients that , when it comes to Stenter, he would make run the Ahmadabad make and hence no need to spent Euro 400,000 for a German Machine. Though I will not agree one bit with him, but then that is the extension of the culture. Unless Machine Makers reinforce the market that this perception of High Cost is wrong , the attitude will be barrier for sale of European Machines. These Gate Keepers will not permit the machines to move further into the large middle segment of Textiles.
Fifth : No machine maker ever segments the market. Big company to small company to Industry wise segmentation, say Home Furnishings, Automotive weavers, Industrial Yarns, Commodity yarns, Specialized yarns, Medical Yarns, Sports Yarns, Dyed Yarns, knitting yarns, etc etc. Whatever products range they have, they would try and fit to all segments. No one thinks, ok, let me make a special brochure for Home Furnishing customers and design a machine, which has features suitable for coarse yarns,that are most used in Home Furnishing. Any case the machine is the same, but now it has some other additional features and has been Branded as Home Funrnishing Horse and is getting the attention it deserves from the customer. Eg: Yarns of size 8s count with 4 ply is a very specialized yarn and is mostly used by home burnishers. But there is no such machine exclusively that can be offered to the yarn spinner. If only Volkmann, could have called its Large Pot Dia machines as Home Furnishing Twisters and made a separate catalog and would have added some funny features to it, then it opens a new segment of market for itself. But what it does is to have one catalog, where all its models are listed and the pot diameter and the twist range and then it is upto to the customer to consider, that this is the best choice for his application. This is not marketing anyday.
Not realizing that Textile is still a fragmented industry and 99% of the industry is family business and 1% only is MNC or Coroporatized. So, the customer base is strictly family run businesses, where the owner of the plant is the final authority for each capital expenditure. And in such an environment , the general perceptions are more important then the asset itself. Unless your machine is perceived as the exclusive solution to a certain segment of market, it does not get the attention it needs.
Sixth : Technology : None of the machine makers has invested into upgrading the technology. If 18 th century was the Industrial revolution, then 21st century is the Digital revolution. The machines,which are designed in the 19th century are just about the same. Very little has changed. I once spoke to a Technical Adviser to Barmag and told him, why could he not design a machine, which would run at 3000 metres per minute and the usual stupid answer you get from everyone. But the Yarn should Run.
We are there to run the yarn, if you can make the machine run.
Barmag, a man made fibre machine maker who makes machines for FDY, running at 5000 metres per minute and the yarn does not break, is questioning that on texturizing , the yarn could not run at 3000 metres. If early texturizing machines has pin type texturizing, then moving to disc type texturizing was a technology advancement. But since then, no one ever moved further. Still the machines run with Disc and at speeds of 1500 metres maximum. Anycase , still better then 800 metres per minute in the year 1987. However, it needs to be noted, when I say Technology, it is not the speed. It is the process. Like Open End is a Technology by itself, Jet Spinning is a technology by itself, but when it comes to ring spinning, it still stands in time. If only a ring frame maker changed the system of drafting from aprons and cots to a false twister as in DTY machines and rather then cops added a winder , it would have made a new technology.
Today, Murata has taken over from Rieter by designing MVS machines and shrunk, simplex , spinning and winding to one machine. They have stolen the show. This is an example of investing into technology . But with Europe no such investments were made in technology, only in improving the speeds of the machine ITMA after ITMA. That is how they would measure the performance of their product designs. But the markets want better methods , larger variety in its offerings, besides higher productivity and lower cost of production.
Increasing speeds from ITMA to ITMA is incremental thinking. Adding cosmetic measures to show improvement is lazy thinking. And that is the reason, European machine makers fail and Asians make the same product much cheaper.
Seventh : I see Managers as that of Pre Internet Era and Post Internet Era. Pre Internet Era are those, who know how to connect to the internet and will sometime browse a few things and knows , how to make a presentation out of a computer and some basic skills. And then there are Post Internet Era managers, who use the Information Highway to explore the global developments and factor them quickly into their product offerings and exploit the opportunities. Internet is a source of Innovation, Design, Global Reach, Customers, Competitors, and smart positioning. Check the websites of each and every European machine maker and it is so shameful, that other then the catalog and some product description, the site does not travel anywhere. When the world is writing Blogs and directing one and every internet user to his product , even if it is only $100, here is a case, where 100,000$ machine seller has vague presence on the net. Many of them show up on 10 th page on Google Search. In a world, where every single information is searched by a click of button, no one goes to the 10th page to find a product offering. I have not seen one single blog by any sales manager for his product offerings.
The site does not make a lucid reading at all, it is not informal and friendly. A medium which should have been exploited brutally by the sales team on rampant dissemination of information has been left untouched. In times of Youtube, Facebook etc etc, Machine makers do not find any presence.
Eighth : Technical Seminars : Last year I attended a seminar conducted by Swiss Textile Machine Makers and it was such a shame. Swiss with companies like Rieter, Sulzer, SSM, etc etc and when it comes to making a presentation, it is usual stuff of Slide after slide explaining the machine.
For God sake, the whole world already knows that Swiss are the best machine makers in the world and they also know more of your machine, then what you would know.
It is now your opportunity to make a presentation and tell the customers, how you are more competitive in terms of investment, and how your technology can bring value to the customer and how your machines will make something so exclusive, which market has not seen.
Take some yarn samples and give the baby cones to most significant customers, create an euphoria of your brand, present stories of other customers and present anecdotes and jokes, so that the audience is not sleeping at least. One could see 90% of the audience were sleeping after the lunch and before the lunch they were waiting for the lunch break.
Other then one presentation of Rieter for his open end machines, all the others were pathetic.
Please Machine Maker Association, next time you hold a seminar, get the Top Business School professor to lecture on how to evaluate Capital Goods and how European Machines are cheaper then Asian machines. Because none of the sales managers of European Machine Maker knows, how to explain this simple fact.
Ninth : Skill Set: Since European Textile Industry collapsed 25 years ago, the skill of the sales manager who present the machines to the customers is highly skeptical. Most of these managers themselves are not either Textile Graduate, or they would have never worked in a textile plant or they are from another industry altogather and do not not understand the requirements of the customer. And even if there is a textile graduate, then the selling skills and above all management skills are highly questionable.
Not one single Sales Manager from Europe and I repeat here again that not one single sales manager has ever presented the case of DCF to the customer .Because he himself does not know, what is DCF.
Further, I am still not sure, if the Sales Manager understand the significance of Depreciation as a Tool of marketing. Depreciation is not just an accounting entry to avoid tax. It is the actual source of funds for the company, which it has build over the lifespan of the asset. So, it acts as a source of funds for the purchase of an asset and also acts as a source of tax deduction. Both these elements are never factored by the sales manager in his presentation. A profitable company paying taxes will rather buy an expensive equipment as long as it is tax neutral for him, besides the revenue stream generated out of the asset.
With such nice Business Schools in Europe, the least the machine makers should do is that before commissioning an engineer to field to sell a product worth 100,000$ . He should be sent to Business School for a short program on learning marketing of capital goods. ( Business School opportunity, to design a program for Industrial Product marketing )
Simple basic accounting models to evaluate a capital expenditure for comparison of machines like DCF is one prime tool .
European machine maker does not understand that the competition is not the machine and its quality, it is the low price. And low price cannot be competed all the time by talking only on High Features of Machine and quality of machines. It needs accounting numbers and accounting numbers clearly reflect that operational cost of using a higher investment asset is lower, then the higher investment is automatically justified. ( And in case the asset cannot show this number, then better such machine maker actually packs up, because there is no hope for him, competition knows no boundaries, it will travel right to the doorstep of such a maker ).
Hence, even if you are a high cost machine, it does not make any difference. Because the asset is paying for itself. Money is coming from borrowing . Market is paying the price and owner has the pride of using a European Machine. Higher price also means higher depreciation, which also means, for higher profit company, it is a tax guy who is paying for his machine and not him. This also means, until and unless a sales manager continuously monitors the Financial statement of each of the listed companies, and tracks the profitable ones, then he knows that these companies will for sure invest on accounts of available reserves .But these small fundamentals, only a management guy understands. Not a technical person.
I told once SSM marketing manager, actually your machines are much cheaper then Indian maker and he laughed at me, how can a machine of CHF 4000 Per spl be cheaper then a machine of USD 1300 per spl. But that is where is the BIG DIFFERENCE in sales comes (I will write this in another blog , when I compare SSM to Asian Winding Machine maker ) lately something similar happened. Volkmann lost order of around USD 1 Million to an Indian supplier. Peass Oerlikon asked me to help them out( as they are working togather with Volkmann China for the doubler winder ) and I spoke to the sales manager and he repeated the usual thing, our machines are 20% more expensive then the Indian machine and customer is not willing to give a higher price. Well, I told him, if he gives the contract to me, I will change the order in his favor with a simple arithmetic that his machine is actually cheaper then Indian. He pointed out that he was selling for 20 years and he knew his job. The guy never got back to me and USD1 Million sales gone to the Asian Company. This happens on daily basis.
( Hmmmmm, I am an Indian, so why support the European, let them live in blissful ignorance)
So, unless and until European Machine makers sent their front line sales man and back end Marketing guys to Business schools or hire management graduates, there is no hope for these companies, no matter what they keep doing. Because Asian machines are becoming better with each passing day and they would anyway be always cheaper. Transferring the manufacturing to China or India is not the best solution. As machine making does not need much of manpower.
Most of the machine is outsourced and outsourcing from Eastern Europe will still get you Certificate of Origin of Europe. So, why loose the strategic advantage of Made In Europe.
Further any company in Textile Machine business does not need more then a few designers, outsourced technologist, material manager, and some assembly technicians. Rest is all about making drawings and outsourcing the full machine. So, why should there be a high price to fight the low cost competition. Company should have more and more sales man, because each of this guy is at least getting business and is not a cost centre. All the others are cost centres.
Tenth : Channels of Marketing : Each and Every European machine maker under the sun, has agents and the sales in that particular country depends upon the performance of the agent. Profile these agents and you will find none of them knows the front of the machine to the back of the machine and is basically an escort service. If this is the quality of channel, then what results can one expect from this market.
This agent channel system itself is highly questionable.
It makes far more sense to have your sales rep in each country. Take a local sales guy and ask him to operate from his home. All Travel at actuals and all other expenses at actual. Expenses of hiring a person in Asia is much much lower then the frequent visit of the sales manager from the home country . Further a dedicated sales man is concentrating day and night and knows, if the joker does not get enough orders, he would not have his job. ( Of course this depends upon the volume of business in that country. Say for NZ, one would not keep a sales rep)
In a world, where information is first searched on the net, not one machine maker provides for "Get Customer, Be Rewarded " or similar scheme and for all you know, the damn competitor agent is sending information to you. Why not give Pay Pal vouchers for small denominations for each valuable opportunity and if the opportunity actually materializes, give the joker Euro 100 voucher, so that he looks for more such opportunities and also forwards your brand further. You would have created an automated channel, this way.
Provide for " Sent your Inquiry and get a T shirt" and you find the over enthusiastic plant manager sends the inquiry to you. Ask your sales rep to give him the T shirt, which you would buy in Indonesia for less then 1 $each.
Promotion : Most of the time, the local agent himself does not know, what opportunities are there, he has 10 agencies and his job is to submit the offers to the customers and follow up with a response.More then that , he does not know. Now for all English speaking customers, who are large corporate houses, and communicate directly with the company, the least the machine makers should do is to have a nice lady writing emails and sending newsletters and asking about any service or spares or any other help they need.
If small companies can have a call center doing this little job, why not pay some money to a call center in Philippines or India and ask them to contact the customers regularly. Ask your back office to design a quiz and forward to all the customers connected online and ask them, for the first 10 quick and correct answers, they would get a T Shirt with winner of MANTEX ( winks) or whatever your company name and in such a way, you are creating a brand value.
Intellectual challenges is very motivating for all technical people and they then get a chance to boost amongst the friends and colleagues that they won a prize from a European Machine Maker.
Regularly have Essay competition on What new would you like to have one your spinning or winding or dyeing machine and give one of them a Certificate that he provided a great input. Advertise the competition globally on the net , . All this cost very very little, but is much much better then spending millions of dollars on wasteful exhibitions.
Eleventh : When I first stared working for machine makers, I asked the chief engineer one day, why is that all machines are made in Green color. Well he did have a good answer, but after a few years, machines were in all the colors except Green. The next stage has come now. Machines needs beautiful pictures and department should look like a lively place of work, with whatever screen saver the customer wants ( In India, they will go for Pictures of their favorite Gods, huh ). Lately I asked Thies, why dont they make a rain forest picture on the vessels, so that if you step into the dyeing department, then you feel ,as if stepped in a rain forest.
Twelfth : It is a world of Knowledge economy. World has changed so much that young men now make millions of dollars before they are 30. In an age, where technology is changing so rampantly where in you buy a TV and it is out dated in 3 years, you buy a hand phone and it is outdated in 6 months, cars are changed within 3 years. And any other business accessory which can bring in efficiency and revenue is grabbed by the over hungry consumer.
Wealth positioning has changed. More money is now available with the the Asians, the next generation from the family owned businesses are far better educated and most of them are from top business schools. Textile is flourishing, consumption per GDP in each country across the world has gone up. Old Assets have to be changed in most countries across the world And even now, if Europe will not be able to sell, then there will never come a time again like this.
European machine makers have to realize that they have to educate the customer, that no more the machines are for 10 years or 20 years, it is maximum for 5 years. Because within 5 years, they would offer them a machine , which is twice the productivity of the current machine and hence the operational cost will be half and therefore they are tied up with a Technology supplier who would lead them into the future. They have to educate them that the residual value of a machine after 5 years of usage is still 50% against any Asian machine, which will not be even 25%. So, while working out a DCF, European machines are any day cheaper then any global machine maker. ( Why do I have to educate the Europeans for free)
Unlucky Number Thirteen : Pricing : Unless Europe chooses to keep Sensible pricing, the game is lost even before the match starts. Because already a high price perception exist and 90% of the middle segment, which is rather the large textile manufacturer never even floats an inquiry to the European Machine Maker.
If the whole world has seen that Low Cost Airlines sent State Carriers to bankruptcy, then the lesson to learn was that Atleast start filling your seats, ( Capacity of the plant with whatever price and then move to high priced seats, as the capacity fills ) Why not Put on the website, Price Starts at Euro xxx, which is anyway 10% cheaper then the Asian prices. The damn thing makes the person STARTED, he will least sent an inquiry and explore , what is this offer.
And after that it is your ingenuity to move him up the value chain or just close the deal and fill the capacity. ( Using Marginal Costing contribution as model of pricing formula, rather then keeping a price list and giving obscene discounts, the price list system has failed )
Fourteen :Historical Sales Analysis : I have never seen one single letter from the sales manager to the company, where they sold the machines 10 years back.
Writing that " We are pleased that our last machine , model no xxx sold to you in March 1999 is running successfully and on my last visit , I saw the machine was working at speeds of xxxx . While our machines are designed to surpass generations of usage and pridefully some of the grand chilren use our machines from the first generation.
However, in times of competitiveness, we would strongly recommend that you Budget in your upcoming Capital Budget the replacement of the machine with our New Model " Poogle " where the speeds have though not reached the speed of sound, yet are now double of your existing machine. Plus the technology has moved further and prices of our machines are dropping faster then the bombs in Afghanistan. This would be right time to invest , considering the growth patterns and general improvement in economy "
This makes the thinking process start for the company, because there is a document in front of him, which is showing that the Productivity going up by 50% and cost of production going down by 50% and since he has eaten away his depreciation, it is about time, he needs source of deprecation to keep the tax out of the balance sheet. Funds are anyway coming out of the Depreciation ledger, which he maintained sincerely.
Fifteen : Branding : Textile Machine Makers do not know, what is Branding. A company of 120 years and a company of 10 years old, both only talk about machines and equipments. Thies is a Brand and not a machine. Till the date, Thies keeps selling its machines as machines, it will get only commodity prices. The very day, it realizes, that they have a Brand and they follow the Brand principles, they would be on the Top of the world.
For my own brand, Mantex, I offer the customer, Mantex Dyed can be incorporated onto his final product going to the market. But no one single textile machine maker has ingenuity that he can allow the dyer to put on his Cones THIES DYED, European Technology or Monfront Stabilized, European Technology on his fabrics. This is a show me , talk loud world. Branding makes so much difference, that some day, if the customers of dyed yarns find clearly that Thies Dyed cones were better then xxx dyeing machine cones, then automatically the sales is secured for all times to come.
Imagine, Zara collar would read, - Mantex Dyed Technology- Because Mantex will be a brand related to environment, technology, quality, productivity . It will be extension of life style and no more an equipment.
Sixteen :Secondary Market : Browse the web and check out the number of used machines that get sold and it is mind boggling. There is a hidden opportunity there. Why not monitor these opportunities and offer them a used machine picked out of a Trade In new machine with another customer where ever you think, the customer is hooked to your competitor. This would also need continuous research on historical sales.
Last, my favorite machine maker in Europe is SSM, the one company for whom I have deep respect. This is one company which has shown profit year after year, though has the same challenges of fighting competition with half the price winders. Actually, it has lost out a large chunk of its market to an Indian company, which has now been taken over by Schlafhorst. However, still SSM is profitable. (What an irony of fate, I was writing this article on March 23 and SSM was holding its Annual Results conference . Pity that SSM sales dropped from 81.7 million CHF to 38.6 million CHF with losses of CHF 8.2 Milion , remark posted on March 26, 2010 )
The story of success ( No more now ) of SSM is more linked to one single man : Mr Beat Seigrist, INSEAD graduate, an ex McKinsey consultant and CEO for SSM till 2008, he changed the whole company from a simple machine maker to a Top Performing Swiss Company. At one time, I recall the shares of SSM were quoted at CHF 1400 and up at Zurich Exchange. He made the company market driven, changed the way, the business was done and repositioned the product lines, made sensible prices against old pricing system. Made a flexible organization and within no time SSM was a darling company of the stock exchange. The profitability was envy of many a giants in Europe.
The company still has good product lines, but .............., times changed, the product lines of SSM have again only shown incremental advantages and it is getting trapped into the same vicious cycle of other makers. SSM does not realize that winder is not just a winding machine. It is far too much more then soft winder and assembly winders in winding applications. Though air covering was a good product line, yet the extension of the same thought process never went further in the company. Simple again, the company does not have textile graduates , who can see beyond the application of soft, assembly, rewinding and air covering. It is also struggling against Asian maker on its conventional product lines and if it does not quickly bring the wisdom of Mr Beat Siegrist into the business, will see the same results as others. ( Ironical the day I wrote this blog, the same day SSM posted the inevitable.
Though, when it comes to selling, SSM has the same weaknesses as other machine makers. Wish Beat could have given them more time.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Yarn Dyeing Machines - Fraud of the Century.
The Biggest Fraud in Yarn Dyeing Machines is the way the capacity is defined and the way the machine is designed. For all those who are Textile Graduates know that the technology of yarn dyeing is that yarn is wetted in a dye liquor for a certain time and certain temperature to achieve the desired shade.
So basically a HT HP Package dyeing machine is a pressure cooker, which all of us have in our kitchen and your wife cooks on routine in this cooker. And every cooker the capacity is defined in LITRES AND NOT IN KGS. Which is to say, litres of water that would fill the empty cooker.
Technically speaking the machine maker then sells his machines with a specification of Liquor to Material ratio of 1:6 or 7 or 8 and then takes pride that he has now reduced it to 5 or 4.5. Now one has to be enough brain damaged to believe that yarn requires 5 times the liquor to dye. Say Viscose, which has the highest moister regain of 13% and was loaded with zero regain, even then it would not absorb more then 13% of its own weight and the balance will get circulated and only the dye diffusion would take place. So, where is the need for 5 times dye liquor.
But the machine maker is a mechanical vessel maker, he does not know what are the fundamentals of yarn dyeing.As a copy paste artist, he has copied the design of one of his competitor and now proudly unloads it to naive users. The first designer of the machine in the early 19 the century over designed the machine to make it foolproof and allowed 10 times more water then was actually required. But those days, when power, steam etc was very low priced, such machines were never questioned and now of course, if someone makes a small change in that design, the machine is questioned for the performance , more so by the competitor .
No one ever waits and thinks, why should there be 6 times water then the dye load ? Which theory in Dyeing says that there should be 6 times water, only then the yarn will dye ? The prime job of water is to wet the dyes and the yarn and at certain temperature the dyes will diffuse into the package and there is no other work of water. But does anyone stop and think and ask the machine maker to redesign the machine , lest it should fail and he be blamed for all the loss.
Water to the extent of 2 times is already more then enough, though the optimum level will have to be researched and may well be much lower then 2 times and any case never more then that. More water means, more steam required for heating, more chemicals and auxiliaries, which are added as a percentage of water, more electricity for pumping the water and more effluent to process and more waste of water.
If you are a Textile Engineer and have worked many years in dyeing, then you know what is to be done now. Any existing installation in your plant is actually worth double the capacity, if properly configured. So, without any capital overlay, you can dye atleast 50% more by properly utilizing your assets. And this additional 50% is getting dyed almost free for you.Exactly the same principle of Home Cooker applies to a dyeing machine.
Therefore the capacity of dyeing machine technically should be in LITRES AND NOT KGS. BUT THE YARN DYEING MACHINES ARE SOLD AS CAPACITY OF YARN THAT IT CAN DYE AND NOT THE CAPACITY OF DYE LIQUOR IT CAN HOLD. If you knew the dye liquor capacity, you would have then quickly calculated, how much yarn could load based on 1: 2.5 material to liquor ratio. However, as of now no such concept exist.
Any Intelligent Yarn Dyer knows that he can then load more yarn by ensuring the following on the carrier to get a higher payload per dye cycle. SO THE CARRIER IS SOMETHING WHICH NEEDS TO BE DESIGNED BY THE USER AND NOT THE MACHINE MAKER AND SHOULD TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE SMALLEST SPACE AVAILABLE FOR LOADING OF THE YARN .Bearing in mind that Yarn to Liquor ratio should be 1: 2.5 .
( After I first published this report here, many emails challenged me, stating that any case the machine designer has done this job, however, to get the defined ratio, it will not just the carrier, but simple use of intelligence. If you can solve the problem below, you can get the ratio, otherwise no)
9 points are plotted below. Cut these with only 4 lines without lifting of your pen ( clue :lines can cross ) and if you can do it, then you have the solution of getting the ratio of 1:2.5 with no matter, what the design of your machine and what the maker specifies as 1:10 or 1:6.
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
Any Intelligent Yarn Dyer knows that he can then load more yarn by ensuring the following on the carrier to get a higher payload per dye cycle.
BEST DESIGNER WILL GET THE HIGHEST PAYLOAD AND LOWEST COST OF YARN DYEING, SOME OF THE AREAS OF DESIGN ARE AS UNDER.
Longer Dyeing Pole .Less Space between the Poles.Manipulating the Dye package to be smaller and more dense to load more kilos.Loading yarns to the extent of 1:2.5 ratio of dye liquor .
An intelligent dyer will also advise the machine maker to make spindles of the dyeing machine with simple three thin supporting rods for the yarn and fully OPEN so that the YARN COLUMN effectively acts like a virtual spindle and there is no spindle. This of course, reduces the pump pressure, makes the liquor move rapidly across the package easily and surely can be made flexible to load only to the extent of packages required so that no blinds are required to cover the unused spindle length.
A good yarn dyer will not have a yarn carrier. He will have the machine directly with poles and provide for a small pneumatic system to load and unload the yarn coloumn . So, there is no need for a carrier, no need for a overhead crane and much simpler and easier to handle the yarn.
A good dyer will use ONLY AND ONLY USE MANTEX DYESPRIGS and no other dyepackage centre for best results in dyeing.
The pump will get connected to the machine bottom directly with a return valve for circulation.
However, if you are a great engineer, then you would not buy the pump and under each and every dyespindle provide a small pump based on the height of the spindle and number of packages loaded and then make all these pumps run with one invertor. If providing so many pumps is a hassle, then divide the number of spindles and use 3 to 4 pumps of smaller capacity. So, right under the spindle the liquor gets pressurized and all spindles get the same pressure. Otherwise with conventional one monster pump leakage in any one spindle causes a disaster to the full dyelot. Further, if you are still an ingenious designer, then you would rather not pump the dye liquor from the bottom, but from the top of the spindle. All it needs is a flexible hose from the liquor lines which would come from the side of the vessel. Connect with quick coupling the flexible hoses to the top of follow down cap and rush the liquor downwards. Much simpler to force it downwards as against to raise it upwards. But this top thing is practical only for small capacity machines upto 100 kgs.
Always and always use only Unidirectional Flow. This changing flow is another unproven thing. Anything which is consistent always shows better results then one which is changing regularly. These are simple laws of nature, do not get trapped by the marketing laws. Secondly, the flow rate has to be slow with consistent pressure. Never jump to higher flow rates, it only spoils the initial layers of the package.
A good dyer will provide for unlocking the follow down cap without opening the lid with a solenoid pneumatic valve. The pneumatic line can be the supporting pipes acting as the spindle. It will disengage the follow down cap and allow the yarn to relax after the dyeing cycle.
The dyer will provide a valve on the inlet, so that the liquor line from the pump is shut and the air line gets opened and provide a wind tunnel suction fan to dry away the yarn. So, yarns like polyester filament practically come out fully ready to be rewound , without need for hydro extraction and RF dryer.
A good dyer will provide a camera within the machine, to see the coloring effect and capture the color and measure against the standard. May be the spectrophotometer has to be calibrated to see the colors in the wet package form. Camera can always be in an insulated glass box. ( If under sea photography is possible, this is still photography in a vessel )
A good dyer will provide infra red lamps within the machine or dry heat coming from an external source, lowered into the vessel, after completion of the dyeing and initial moistre removal cycle. This will dry out the rem-anent moisture.
Good dyer will paint the outside of the vessel and all the pipes with beautiful pictures. If a bloody double decker in London can have such nice pictures painted over it, then why not your machine. So, when you walk into the department, you get a feeling of walking in a rain forest and not a jungle of pipes and monster looking machine.
A good dyer will make sure that all control cycles are wireless transferred and most important that the final dyeing result is transferred wireless to the Top management, before the machine is even opened. He knows the investment he made is now showing one after another RFT.
Now the Most Important part, the Management of the Dyeing Department : If dyeing is all about recipes and colors, then God had chosen the Gender " F" for such activities. Women see colors more distinctly, they can feel colors, where as for we Men, What the hell is " Mauve " . Women play with recipes day and night and love to alter them to get a better taste. If dyeing is all about cooking colors, then let the Women take over such jobs. They will revolutionize the whole world of colors and for all you know, she will eat the head off the dye makers to get shades, which are not seen. Now go and find the the best looking dame in the town with flair for colors and cooking. ( Check the blog Tastespotting and you would see, how much creativity is there in common man. These food blogs have put Top 5* Hotel chefs to shame .And so much of this unrecognized skill is showing up with a simple handphone camera and a computer connected to the internet, Tastespotting will get extended to all areas of lifestyle one day, where common man creativity will supersede the marketing gimmicks of companies and will become the reference point of design and lifestyle)
Have you ever seen, anyone wearing Greige fabrics, Textiles is all about colors. And more the assortment of colors that you can design , the better the dyer you are and if you are smart enough, you would take a copyright on the damn color.
PLZZZZZZZZZZZ, this is already year 2010. When will the Textile Machine makers wake up and move afar from machines which were designed in year 1850. If the 19th century was an Industrial revolution, then 21 st century is a Digital Revolution.
My simple design is available for commercialization till I get the money and make a machine myself. But the machine described above is which is a combination of dyeing, Hydro extractor, drying, , no carriers, no extra handling and above all the machine works with a material to liquor ratio of 1:2. Cost of making such a machine will be minimal and to this just add the control from Barco or just ask Google or one such nerd to design one for you and download it free and run the machine with your lap top. The control of steam valves, pumps, other valves does not require very sophisticated software, you can do it yourself , if you have some programming knowledge.
After the dyeing and drying cycle, the pneumatic system will lift the yarn colomn and download it on your favorite winding machine. Just ask "Festo" or similar to design the system for you and they would automate the whole plant at no addl. cost.
So, here is a machine, which works on automation and very low M:L ratio and low power, very low effluent and 50% higher productivity.
A good dyer will have enough Heat Exchanger Tubes in the liquor drainage system to capture the heat from the liquor and use in boiler efficiency.A good dyer will use SS 304 grade of steel for his dyeing of polyester and polyester spun yarns and all other man made fibre yarns and reduce the cost of dyeing machine by at least 25%. No average textile engineer knows the difference between the steel composition of American standard 304 grade and American standard 316 grade and the industry follows the code of 316 grade blindly. The Molybdenum percentage of 2% in aisi 316 does help in anti corrosion, but this is only for ship vessels, which are all the time in highly corrosive salt water. In case of yarn dyeing, the salt used for cotton dyeing is still a very small percentage and has a minimal influence on the vessel .
It is upto you to take the risk.But one and every yarn dyer other then Pacific Textiles Group, I have seen ,never questions the dyeing machine and blindly buys the equipment and uses the equipment inefficiently.
Machine maker anyway wants to sell more machines, so why would he advise that the machine will take a higher payload. He is not a dyer, he is a PRESSURIZED VESSEL MAKER, who has added a pump and a control panel to make a machine which dyes yarns. Then there are low performance engineers, who have added a yarn carrier, sub optimally designed to load the yarn into this vessel. After that it is your baby. Have Fun.
This is why I call Yarn Dyeing Machines - Fraud of the century.
So basically a HT HP Package dyeing machine is a pressure cooker, which all of us have in our kitchen and your wife cooks on routine in this cooker. And every cooker the capacity is defined in LITRES AND NOT IN KGS. Which is to say, litres of water that would fill the empty cooker.
Technically speaking the machine maker then sells his machines with a specification of Liquor to Material ratio of 1:6 or 7 or 8 and then takes pride that he has now reduced it to 5 or 4.5. Now one has to be enough brain damaged to believe that yarn requires 5 times the liquor to dye. Say Viscose, which has the highest moister regain of 13% and was loaded with zero regain, even then it would not absorb more then 13% of its own weight and the balance will get circulated and only the dye diffusion would take place. So, where is the need for 5 times dye liquor.
But the machine maker is a mechanical vessel maker, he does not know what are the fundamentals of yarn dyeing.As a copy paste artist, he has copied the design of one of his competitor and now proudly unloads it to naive users. The first designer of the machine in the early 19 the century over designed the machine to make it foolproof and allowed 10 times more water then was actually required. But those days, when power, steam etc was very low priced, such machines were never questioned and now of course, if someone makes a small change in that design, the machine is questioned for the performance , more so by the competitor .
No one ever waits and thinks, why should there be 6 times water then the dye load ? Which theory in Dyeing says that there should be 6 times water, only then the yarn will dye ? The prime job of water is to wet the dyes and the yarn and at certain temperature the dyes will diffuse into the package and there is no other work of water. But does anyone stop and think and ask the machine maker to redesign the machine , lest it should fail and he be blamed for all the loss.
Water to the extent of 2 times is already more then enough, though the optimum level will have to be researched and may well be much lower then 2 times and any case never more then that. More water means, more steam required for heating, more chemicals and auxiliaries, which are added as a percentage of water, more electricity for pumping the water and more effluent to process and more waste of water.
If you are a Textile Engineer and have worked many years in dyeing, then you know what is to be done now. Any existing installation in your plant is actually worth double the capacity, if properly configured. So, without any capital overlay, you can dye atleast 50% more by properly utilizing your assets. And this additional 50% is getting dyed almost free for you.Exactly the same principle of Home Cooker applies to a dyeing machine.
Therefore the capacity of dyeing machine technically should be in LITRES AND NOT KGS. BUT THE YARN DYEING MACHINES ARE SOLD AS CAPACITY OF YARN THAT IT CAN DYE AND NOT THE CAPACITY OF DYE LIQUOR IT CAN HOLD. If you knew the dye liquor capacity, you would have then quickly calculated, how much yarn could load based on 1: 2.5 material to liquor ratio. However, as of now no such concept exist.
Any Intelligent Yarn Dyer knows that he can then load more yarn by ensuring the following on the carrier to get a higher payload per dye cycle. SO THE CARRIER IS SOMETHING WHICH NEEDS TO BE DESIGNED BY THE USER AND NOT THE MACHINE MAKER AND SHOULD TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE SMALLEST SPACE AVAILABLE FOR LOADING OF THE YARN .Bearing in mind that Yarn to Liquor ratio should be 1: 2.5 .
( After I first published this report here, many emails challenged me, stating that any case the machine designer has done this job, however, to get the defined ratio, it will not just the carrier, but simple use of intelligence. If you can solve the problem below, you can get the ratio, otherwise no)
9 points are plotted below. Cut these with only 4 lines without lifting of your pen ( clue :lines can cross ) and if you can do it, then you have the solution of getting the ratio of 1:2.5 with no matter, what the design of your machine and what the maker specifies as 1:10 or 1:6.
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
Any Intelligent Yarn Dyer knows that he can then load more yarn by ensuring the following on the carrier to get a higher payload per dye cycle.
BEST DESIGNER WILL GET THE HIGHEST PAYLOAD AND LOWEST COST OF YARN DYEING, SOME OF THE AREAS OF DESIGN ARE AS UNDER.
Longer Dyeing Pole .Less Space between the Poles.Manipulating the Dye package to be smaller and more dense to load more kilos.Loading yarns to the extent of 1:2.5 ratio of dye liquor .
An intelligent dyer will also advise the machine maker to make spindles of the dyeing machine with simple three thin supporting rods for the yarn and fully OPEN so that the YARN COLUMN effectively acts like a virtual spindle and there is no spindle. This of course, reduces the pump pressure, makes the liquor move rapidly across the package easily and surely can be made flexible to load only to the extent of packages required so that no blinds are required to cover the unused spindle length.
A good yarn dyer will not have a yarn carrier. He will have the machine directly with poles and provide for a small pneumatic system to load and unload the yarn coloumn . So, there is no need for a carrier, no need for a overhead crane and much simpler and easier to handle the yarn.
A good dyer will use ONLY AND ONLY USE MANTEX DYESPRIGS and no other dyepackage centre for best results in dyeing.
The pump will get connected to the machine bottom directly with a return valve for circulation.
However, if you are a great engineer, then you would not buy the pump and under each and every dyespindle provide a small pump based on the height of the spindle and number of packages loaded and then make all these pumps run with one invertor. If providing so many pumps is a hassle, then divide the number of spindles and use 3 to 4 pumps of smaller capacity. So, right under the spindle the liquor gets pressurized and all spindles get the same pressure. Otherwise with conventional one monster pump leakage in any one spindle causes a disaster to the full dyelot. Further, if you are still an ingenious designer, then you would rather not pump the dye liquor from the bottom, but from the top of the spindle. All it needs is a flexible hose from the liquor lines which would come from the side of the vessel. Connect with quick coupling the flexible hoses to the top of follow down cap and rush the liquor downwards. Much simpler to force it downwards as against to raise it upwards. But this top thing is practical only for small capacity machines upto 100 kgs.
Always and always use only Unidirectional Flow. This changing flow is another unproven thing. Anything which is consistent always shows better results then one which is changing regularly. These are simple laws of nature, do not get trapped by the marketing laws. Secondly, the flow rate has to be slow with consistent pressure. Never jump to higher flow rates, it only spoils the initial layers of the package.
A good dyer will provide for unlocking the follow down cap without opening the lid with a solenoid pneumatic valve. The pneumatic line can be the supporting pipes acting as the spindle. It will disengage the follow down cap and allow the yarn to relax after the dyeing cycle.
The dyer will provide a valve on the inlet, so that the liquor line from the pump is shut and the air line gets opened and provide a wind tunnel suction fan to dry away the yarn. So, yarns like polyester filament practically come out fully ready to be rewound , without need for hydro extraction and RF dryer.
A good dyer will provide a camera within the machine, to see the coloring effect and capture the color and measure against the standard. May be the spectrophotometer has to be calibrated to see the colors in the wet package form. Camera can always be in an insulated glass box. ( If under sea photography is possible, this is still photography in a vessel )
A good dyer will provide infra red lamps within the machine or dry heat coming from an external source, lowered into the vessel, after completion of the dyeing and initial moistre removal cycle. This will dry out the rem-anent moisture.
Good dyer will paint the outside of the vessel and all the pipes with beautiful pictures. If a bloody double decker in London can have such nice pictures painted over it, then why not your machine. So, when you walk into the department, you get a feeling of walking in a rain forest and not a jungle of pipes and monster looking machine.
A good dyer will make sure that all control cycles are wireless transferred and most important that the final dyeing result is transferred wireless to the Top management, before the machine is even opened. He knows the investment he made is now showing one after another RFT.
Now the Most Important part, the Management of the Dyeing Department : If dyeing is all about recipes and colors, then God had chosen the Gender " F" for such activities. Women see colors more distinctly, they can feel colors, where as for we Men, What the hell is " Mauve " . Women play with recipes day and night and love to alter them to get a better taste. If dyeing is all about cooking colors, then let the Women take over such jobs. They will revolutionize the whole world of colors and for all you know, she will eat the head off the dye makers to get shades, which are not seen. Now go and find the the best looking dame in the town with flair for colors and cooking. ( Check the blog Tastespotting and you would see, how much creativity is there in common man. These food blogs have put Top 5* Hotel chefs to shame .And so much of this unrecognized skill is showing up with a simple handphone camera and a computer connected to the internet, Tastespotting will get extended to all areas of lifestyle one day, where common man creativity will supersede the marketing gimmicks of companies and will become the reference point of design and lifestyle)
Have you ever seen, anyone wearing Greige fabrics, Textiles is all about colors. And more the assortment of colors that you can design , the better the dyer you are and if you are smart enough, you would take a copyright on the damn color.
PLZZZZZZZZZZZ, this is already year 2010. When will the Textile Machine makers wake up and move afar from machines which were designed in year 1850. If the 19th century was an Industrial revolution, then 21 st century is a Digital Revolution.
My simple design is available for commercialization till I get the money and make a machine myself. But the machine described above is which is a combination of dyeing, Hydro extractor, drying, , no carriers, no extra handling and above all the machine works with a material to liquor ratio of 1:2. Cost of making such a machine will be minimal and to this just add the control from Barco or just ask Google or one such nerd to design one for you and download it free and run the machine with your lap top. The control of steam valves, pumps, other valves does not require very sophisticated software, you can do it yourself , if you have some programming knowledge.
After the dyeing and drying cycle, the pneumatic system will lift the yarn colomn and download it on your favorite winding machine. Just ask "Festo" or similar to design the system for you and they would automate the whole plant at no addl. cost.
So, here is a machine, which works on automation and very low M:L ratio and low power, very low effluent and 50% higher productivity.
A good dyer will have enough Heat Exchanger Tubes in the liquor drainage system to capture the heat from the liquor and use in boiler efficiency.A good dyer will use SS 304 grade of steel for his dyeing of polyester and polyester spun yarns and all other man made fibre yarns and reduce the cost of dyeing machine by at least 25%. No average textile engineer knows the difference between the steel composition of American standard 304 grade and American standard 316 grade and the industry follows the code of 316 grade blindly. The Molybdenum percentage of 2% in aisi 316 does help in anti corrosion, but this is only for ship vessels, which are all the time in highly corrosive salt water. In case of yarn dyeing, the salt used for cotton dyeing is still a very small percentage and has a minimal influence on the vessel .
It is upto you to take the risk.But one and every yarn dyer other then Pacific Textiles Group, I have seen ,never questions the dyeing machine and blindly buys the equipment and uses the equipment inefficiently.
Machine maker anyway wants to sell more machines, so why would he advise that the machine will take a higher payload. He is not a dyer, he is a PRESSURIZED VESSEL MAKER, who has added a pump and a control panel to make a machine which dyes yarns. Then there are low performance engineers, who have added a yarn carrier, sub optimally designed to load the yarn into this vessel. After that it is your baby. Have Fun.
This is why I call Yarn Dyeing Machines - Fraud of the century.
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