In the space of just five years, Haitian has gone from being a local injection moulding machine builder to the biggest in the world both by volume and turnover. One of the brains behind this success is Prof. Dipl-Ing. Helmar Franz, Chief Strategy Officer and Member of the Board of Haitian International. We set out to discover from him the secrets behind the dynamic rise of Haitian. “Simple is beautiful” is the credo which runs through practically all his statements, whether he is discussing machine development, production or after sales service.
The interview on Haitian’s stand at the K Fair with Prof. Dipl-Ing. Helmar Franz (centre) was conducted by Waldemar Schmitke (opposite) and Alexander Büchler (right). On the left is Sonja Haug, Longo Communication
Prof. Dipl-Ing. Helmar Franz, Chief Strategy Officer and Member of the Board of Haitian International (photo: Haitian)
“70 to 80 % of all the plastic components manufactured are straightforward parts, they do not need any high end machines or umpteen processes in an operation. The decisive factor here is unit cost.” Thus, Franz sums up his view of the world of plastic components. He calls it “de-mystifying the world of plastics”.
Plastics: Why, then, has Haitian become so strong? Are there enough competitors around who also build simple machines?
Franz: Simple parts do not necessarily equate to inexpensive machines. Before we started we asked our customers “What are the things you will be worrying about most in plastics production in five years‘ time?” The most frequent answer, by a very long way, was the cost of energy and materials. So we made this our starting point as far as our machine developments were concerned.
Plastics: Taking the cost of energy as the keyword, is this the reason why you launched the electric Zhafir Series on the market?
Franz: The Zhafir machine series is of course one of the building blocks in the strategy, but our bread and butter machines are the servo-hydraulic Jupiter and Mars series. Introduced seven years ago, the Mars range was first in the servo-hydraulic series of machines, and to date, more than 90,000 of these machines have been sold. The Jupiter range is based on this technology. The use of servo-hydraulic pumps, and the big dual plate technology (5,500kN to 66,000kN) used in the Jupiter series has led to significant energy savings. In addition, there are plastication units featuring big injection pressures, enabling parts to be manufactured with thinner walls, thus saving materials. Now we are also able to offer installations for material thicknesses of 0.4mm. In the case of the all-electric Venus series the focus was on speed and efficiency up to a clamping force of 5,500kN.
The new Jupiter II series from 5,500 to 66,000kN (photo: Haitian)
Plastics: And so that is the secret of your success?
Franz (laughs): Yes, if you put it that way, but there were still plenty of additional steps that we needed to address along the way. You can only sell these lines at a good price if you have designed your production facilities to be correspondingly cost-efficient. And the production side can only work efficiently if the design of the machinery permits this.
Plastics: Did your German engineering expertise help you here?
Franz: Unfortunately, only in an indirect way. I had noticed that German engineers come up with some fantastic systems on their drawing boards, but often they ignore both production costs and customer needs. For us it was not a problem as we had already defined the customer benefits we wished to offer. The real problem is that a western engineer thinks in terms of western production methods but these do not exist in China. So before putting anything down on paper I spent several months looking at production options on site.
Plastics: So what would you say is the difference: do the Chinese work less efficiently?
Franz: Basically there are other processes at work here. Take the case of cast parts as an example. Let’s say that the parts here in Europe are produced with a slight excess of 0.5mm before coming into the plant and on to the CNC milling machine. In China they do things differently. There the excess is considerably larger (5-6mm). If they were then to clamp up the cast parts on the CNC line this would entail an immense number of machine hours. For this reason, in China, the cast parts are first of all coarsely scrubbed and only then do they go on to the CNC lines. This makes the cast parts considerably less expensive, even though they also end up with the correct dimensions. This is just one of a number of examples.
Plastics: So you tend to work with Chinese engineers?
Franz: In Ningbo we have some enthusiastic young engineers. The team here has grown from 180 to 450 employees.
Plastics: In Europe we say that the first machine is sold by Sales, but subsequent machines by the Aftersales Service. How does it look from the Haitian standpoint?
Franz: This is one way that Europeans look at things. The good thing about it is that the Europeans are also willing to pay for this service. In China the processors also want service, but there it is part of the culture that says that service is covered in the purchase price. We have therefore attached particular value to the fact that our machines, so to speak, get by without service. It would not be possible to fund a service structure based on the western model for up to 30,000 new machines per year.
Of course, this also makes the international business structure simpler. At the end of the day it is the representatives locally who take care of the service side. In addition, you have to remember that we try to kit out all our machines with as many identical parts as possible so as to
1. achieve a favourable price at the purchasing level by means of a large number of units and
2. ensure that we are able to maintain a considerably smaller stock of spares than our western competitors need to. I have the impression that our ‘fellow campaigners’ sometimes underestimate the costs of complexity.
Plastics: Thank you very much, Prof. Franz.
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