Global: John travels to Trumpf Austria & Singapore
"My recent visit to Austria, courtesy of Trumpf, was very hectic but very enjoyable. I was able to catch up with the latest technology from their Press-brake manufacturing facility.
"They are making huge advances with small high speed machines and recently released more flexible robotic technology for automated folding of components, ideally suited to job shop manufacture.
"I was also able to visit Trumpf customers who operated jobbing shops of similar size to ours. I was pleasantly surprised to find we rated very highly compared to these companies in terms of capability, systems and organisation."
Accompanied by Peter Thompson from Aotea Machinery in Auckland, they were treated to some great Austrian hospitality from the 'boys at Trumpf'.
"We had a great ‘boys’ visit to the Red Bull museum (Hanger-7), this is the most elaborate all stainless and glass structure I have ever seen and all the ‘very big boys toys’ were in perfect working order!" (See photos left and right)
John and Peter left Austria for Singapore to visit Trumpf, and some more job shops in Malaysia and Singapore. It was noted that sheet metal job shops in Singapore and Malaysia with labour costs that were about one fifth of ours, were setting up in Vietnam to take advantage of lower labour costs!
John said, "They were operated with less automation than us and using less sophisticated systems, thus confirming for me that we are on the right track with our pursuit of ‘Lean’, automation, and robust job scheduling systems."
After visiting these factories, John said that it was clear that countries with high labour costs (including NZ) need to utilise technology to combat low cost manufacture in Asia, China and other regions. - September 2008
