Continued Growth In ASEAN

Lee Ee Sian, general manager, Sandvik Coromant,
South & East Asia

Sandvik Coromant will continue to strengthen our operations and presence in different ASEAN countries. We have planned to further strengthen our position in this region with a strong conviction that this is one of the few regions globally that we could expect better than average growth in the coming years. In 2016, we will continue to drive ONE business idea which is to help our customers to be more competitive in their businesses by improving productivity and reducing downtime in their productions.

Every year, we introduce over 2500 new products to the market through our established global new product introduction process. Our recent product releases include CoroMill 390, Inveio Grade series 4325 and the CoroCut QD Parting and Grooving and CoroMill Plura.

Sandvik Coromant will continue to spend a substantial percentage of our global revenue into R&D to develop new metal cutting technology and products as well as more efficient production technology.

Customers in this region can expect Sandvik Coromant to continue to support metal cutting industry with our ground breaking product technology as well as our knowledge in manufacturing production. Our sales engineers and authorised distributors within the regions will continue to work closely with our customers so that their needs will be met in one way or another.

We believe that the ASEAN region will grow in 2016. We are aligning our Business Strategy with the expected growth in this region so that we can further strengthen our market position. Most importantly, this is to meet the increasing expectations of our customers and this is our promise!

Keeping The Focus On Core Strengths

Joseph Arezone, managing director, Europe, Middle East,
Africa & Asia Pacific, Faro

In recent years, we noticed a shift in demand among our customers, from contact to non-contact measurement methods. This can be attributed in part to the popularity of additive manufacturing, as well as the rise of automated in-line inspection in the factory environment. Besides, across market segments, a preference for more complex, curvy shapes (as opposed to ‘boxy’ designs primarily formed with straight lines) is increasingly commonplace. All of these factors have played a part in the proliferation of non-contact measurement techniques.

In fact, Faro launched several devices with laser scanning capabilities – such as the Faro Edge ScanArm HD and Faro Freestyle3D/3D X Series – in order to respond to these market needs. Going into 2016, we expect this trend to further develop and we’ll remain close to our customers, in order to best understand and address their measurement needs.

In the last 12 months, Faro products have been well received by its customers, and we are heartened by the response that we’ve seen. For instance, the Edge ScanArm HD’s matchless scanning capabilities and the Freestyle3D’s novel applications are some of the success stories that we are proud of, to name a few. This was made possible because of the close relationships that we hold with our customers. It was through this approach that Faro came up with disruptive technology known as the Faro Laser Scanner Focus3D X Series today. Moving forward, we are confident of pushing out even more devices that address real, felt needs.

We recognise that the major economies of the world are facing a slowdown, which will have an impact on manufacturers across the Asia Pacific region. This, in turn, has an effect on Faro’s growth as well. However, we will continue to focus on our core strengths of servicing the automotive and metalworking industries, as well as look into offering solutions for ‘new’ industries, such as the law enforcement and energy sectors. The former would involve making improvements to our FaroArm and Faro Laser Tracker product lines, whereas the latter would be about unconventional applications for the Faro Scanner Freestyle3D.

As mentioned earlier, Faro believes that its solutions address customers’ real needs, which evolve with the passage of time. A product that used to work for manufacturers may become obsolete in time to come, which could be as a result of competing technologies that claim to be more efficient.

New Technologies The Key

Taveesak Srisuntisuk, managing director of Hexagon
Manufacturing Intelligence, Thailand

With the change in name, it is a move into expanding the breadth of our offerings to the manufacturing as a whole. Slowly, we shall be sensitising our customers to our rebranding which came along with our Q-Das and Vero acquisitions. In the events to come, we will be bringing more products associated with these brands to be at our booths.

Within Thailand, our main customer base is the automotive sector and our market share is consists of 70 percent of the total sales. With some models, the buying decision comes from headquarters abroad but we still provide after sales services. It is time for Thailand, in the production to be concerned about the throughput, cycle time and so forth. With labour costs rising, there is a need to adopt new technologies and methods to offset this problem especially in the adoption of more automation to increase productivity in line production. Automotive companies are already looking to venture into other territories like Vietnam and Indonesia. So Thailand cannot rest on its laurels even though it is the largest automotive supplier in the region. I think the ongoing trend that is gaining even more momentum is speed, aside from cost.

Hexagon is well placed to be an integral part of the automotive industry. Besides our product offerings, we have excellent after sales service, which is something very important that a lot of providers forget. Hexagon is acknowledged for excellent after-sales service, because we compete by using a 'Next Day Service' policy – a policy which sees us answering to any customers’ needs by the next day, regardless of the size of the business.

Looking ahead, Indonesia might look to be challenging Thailand’s dominance in the automotive manufacturing scene despite improving quickly. Vietnam might be a potential challenger to the manufacturing powerhouses in the region.

Getting Ahead Of The Game

Alexander Tjioe, president, Schunk Asia

The beauty of the Schunk offerings is that it can cover so many industries that include metalworking. Right now we have a focus on automation in manufacturing. In the factory space where there tends to be a work hazard, automation would be the solution and we have solutions right across the board for any of those needs.

When we talk about automation, people always tend to think of what is going to happen to their jobs if robots, let’s say take over their roles. So where is their place on the manufacturing floor? The long answer is this: It is without doubt that companies are looking for more output coupled with efficiency and it is also true that a machine with a robot can produce the output of maybe four people for the same amount of time. However, companies should be thinking beyond just cutting the labour costs since it would be senseless to be just pushing buttons – there are definitely expanded roles for people with specific expertise. What more companies are doing today is the retraining of employees to expand their skillsets so that they do not go obsolete in a world of robots. As the industry evolves, so does the workplace. It is not always about employing less but what I think should be the way to go is: “what can the company do to utilise the expertise of employees in an automated workspace?”

While Europe is at the forefront of technology in the manufacturing space with Industry 4.0 taking shape steadily in businesses, I think it would be a mistake to think that Asia, especially Southeast Asia is very far behind. What I feel is that the players in the various industries here have quite a good sense of the European developments and are eager to learn and adopt more of those technologies. This is because the world economy is moving and evolving as we speak and businesses are already feeling the heat of change – one that requires new business concepts in which a large part involves the procurement of more advanced machine floor products and services. Industry players would do well to be able to see the golden opportunity of catching the worm early before the global economy recovers and businesses pick up. What I mean is that you don’t just want your business to pick up, you want to be relevant and at the same time be the innovator because that’s where the business value lies. And here at Schunk, we are ready to give customers this early headstart with our wide range of offerings mentioned earlier.

2016 is going to be something exciting for Schunk and we have recruited people in the Southeast Asian region. We now have a technology centre in Indonesia in Tangerang – a strategic location and this centre is 750 sq m where training and demonstrations will take place for our customers. We will be opening one in either Thailand or Vietnam this year where we are strengthening our presence.

Getting A Cut Through Innovation

Joerg Ellerkmann, managing director, Trumpf Asia Pacific

The Trumpf Group can look back on a very good fiscal year (2014/2015). We continued to grow in order to optimally position ourselves in important fields, markets, and product segments of the future. The last year has confirmed that the strategy of growth through innovation, regional diversification and customer care is a successful one. We were able to boost our sales significantly. The consolidated sales of Trumpf increased in relation to the previous year by 5.0 percent to €2.72 billion (US$2.9 billion).

Nowadays it is getting more important to get machines connected through software. If we take a closer look to the trend of smart manufacturing that involves the use of advancements in communication and information technology in order to increase the degree of automation and digititalisation of processes we can see that this trend opens up entirely new opportunities for our customers and Trumpf.

For us it is clear that we will be taking the production connectivity into our own hands. In order to follow this trend we focussed on a new company called AXOOM GmbH, which was founded by Trumpf. It is developing an operating system with preinstalled apps for the world of production. The open, vendor-neutral platform enables reliable data transportation as well as data storage and analysis. At the same time, it offers solution modules for seamless order processing within a production operation.

In order to commit further to the Southeast Asian market, we have further expansion plans in the region such as establishing a new Trumpf subsidiary in Thailand. Also we will be closer to the market with an own Trumpf branch in the Philippines. This will allow us to offer full service capacity and sales support in each market throughout the region. All subsidiaries are supported by the regional Trumpf Headquarters in Singapore with its spare parts logistic hub and in-house service support.

Our main focus in the next year is to boost our customer̕s businesses with a new software called TruTops Boost – to be in line with the mentioned trend of smart manufacturing. This new software solution gives our customers the opportunity to merge into a single system all the steps needed to generate sheet metal manufacturing programs from part design and data import to nesting and even writing NC programs for cutting, punching and bending.

But Trumpf never stands still when it comes to innovations (The R&D ratio in relation to sales for Trumpf stands at almost ten percent. Thus we are looking forward to launch new products and even new technologies in the Southeast Asian market in the coming year 2016.

Siemens PLM 2015 Year-End Roundups And 2016 Outlooks

Pete Carrier, senior vice president and managing director,
Asia Pacific, Siemens PLM Software

2015 saw the markets within the AP region move away from low-skill and low cost productions. The manufacturing climate saw several contractions across countries such as China, Korea and Singapore – with global metal-working giants such as China and Japan taking the hardest hit.

However, through the formation of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015, the metalworking sector in Asia began to slowly enjoy greater access to markets and freer flow of goods, services and labour. With ASEAN’s efforts to lower barriers for organisations to regionalise, businesses have started to take heed to upgrade their capabilities by investing in smart technology.

The uptake of IoT by local manufacturer also improved in 2015 as countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia are increasingly seen as important global players in the space. While the countries were chosen because of low labour costs, but locally run vendors and OEMs remain proactive when it comes to technology implementation within their factories to overcome productivity inefficiencies.

Connecting Machines In An IoT World

Bob Gill, general manager, Southeast Asia, ARC Advisory Group

ARC Advisory Group research indicates that the proportion of machine tool time actually taken up by cutting metal is less than 40 percent and can even be as low as 25 percent. But with most machine shops performing manual, post-production data collection processes, it can be difficult to accurately pinpoint the causes of all that non-productive machining time.

However, against the backdrop of the promise of the everything-connected world of the Internet of Things (IoT), comes MTConnect, which heralds a new era of automated, real-time data collection and much greater visibility into manufacturing operations. As an open, royalty-free protocol, MTConnect enables plug-and-play connectivity to machine tools, unlocking production data previously too onerous to extract in a multi-vendor machine environment.

The collaboration between Mazak and IoT evangelist Cisco to develop the new Mazak SmartBox is evidence of the connectivity trend set to gain momentum in 2016. SmartBox integrates with any machine tool (not just Mazak’s) and has MTConnect software running directly on Cisco’s Industrial Ethernet (IE) 4000 switch. The real-time information that it makes available, particularly that related to machine idle time, is highly valuable to manufacturers looking to resolve downtime issues and improve overall productivity.

Automation In Welding

Stanley Chew, vice president and managing director, ESAB Asia/Pacific

In 2016 ESAB will continue to build on the strength of a diverse welding and cutting product portfolio that includes the brands of ESAB, Victor, Tweco, Aircair, Stoody and Cigweld. Having such a broad offering helps us better meet customer needs – with a total system package – bundled solutions that improve productivity and performance and lower the cost of production.

An area that continues to be a key focus for ESAB is welding automation. Based on “Voice of the Customer” research we’ve conducted – which is core to our product development efforts – we know that automation is critically important to our customers to help reduce cost, increase output and keep them competitive on a global scale, especially in response to the impact of the business recession in the Asia Pacific market.

In addition, the welding industry is applying advanced technologies such as robotics, lasers and cloud-based communication to make the “smart factory” of the future possible. ESAB is taking a leading role in this (Industry 4.0) with the launch of new online data management software. An increasing demand for thick and exotic materials, and the strict requirements associated with their use, will also drive our business in Asia. In this respect, ESAB is especially well-positioned to provide proven and mature processes, advanced technology and equipment to our Asian customers who work with thick plate, mission-critical applications, exotic materials, and the like.

Our customers are also considering new processes and solutions that are more efficient and environmentally friendly. For ESAB, this is a continued priority.

From a welding industry point of view and for all the trades, there is the ongoing challenge of finding adequately trained workers. Automation solutions will help in this respect. ESAB is also able to provide the necessary training to help customers make a smooth transition to a more automated process, as well as develop a more skilled labour force.

Taking Advantage Of The IoT Proliferation

William Meahl, chief commercial officer, DHL

In 2016, DHL Supply Chain will continue pursuing its vision of helping manufacturers to become connected enterprises, facilitating the convergence of plant-floor operations technology (OT) and business-level information technology (IT). By enabling a myriad of remote sensors and devices to collect and exchange data, people and processes across the enterprise and throughout the entire supply chain are connected using a secure, standards-based industrial ethernet/IP network. Our company is taking advantage of the proliferation of smarter in-factory and field devices, big data/analytics, cloud computing, virtualisation, mobility and security, so that our customers are further productive and the world is more sustainable.

The key to achieving the connected enterprise is the ability to converge IT and OT, two independent architectures and systems, into a single, unified design. However, to do so, there are a number of technical and cultural challenges that need to be addressed. Moreover, security is a critical obstacle to any Connected Enterprise, with data showing 70 per cent of businesses had some type of IT security breach last year.

We expect to see a continual merging of technology and communication networks, as well as streamlined networks in business and the industrial environments, as Ethernet becomes the network of choice because it is easy to understand and deploy. There is an estimated US$14 trillion in additional value that businesses can unlock and enjoy by simply maximising top line growth and minimising costs through IoT adoption.

Meeting Asia Pacific’s Needs And Expectations

Cliff Purser, managing director, 600 Machine Tools

The 600 company has its roots in British engineering and with a century of experience is now taking its expertise to the expanding markets of the Asia-Pacific region. Sydney-based 600 Machine Tools has been providing world-class metalworking machines to engineering workshops throughout Australia for more than half a century.

The backbone of the company’s offering is lathes and machining centres, notably the globally-renowned brands of Colchester and Harrison and, more recently, the powerful machines from Clausing of the USA. All three companies, each with an impeccable pedigree, are key members of the UK-based 600 Group.

Driven by innovation, the company is combining its renowned design skills and engineering quality to develop new machines for specific markets and tasks. The continuously updated Colchester-Harrison portfolio, is now complemented by a broad range of machines from Clausing which has become available worldwide. The company has more than 250 distributors in North America, and its sales-volume delivers economies of scale that filter through to end-users.

Many of these sturdy, accurate, and reliable machines are ideal for the workshops and conditions found in Asia-Pacific. The 600 Group executives from UK and the Asia-Pacific regional office in Sydney visited several expanding markets during 2015, and put in place the building-blocks of an expanded regional network.

Our technology incorporates vast knowledge gained in the demanding markets of Europe and US but, importantly, is supported locally by national distributors who understand the specific needs of their customers throughout the Southeast Asian region.

New Opportunities For Growth

Chandran Nair, vice-president (Asia Pacific), National Instruments

In regards to technology, we spend about 16 percent of our revenue on R&D and a large part of it goes towards software and of course hardware platform development. On the software side in 2016 we can expect improvements in our core products, like LABView, which will increase connectivity to smart devices which will increase the analytics capabilities so that people can use the data in more effective ways. We will also see a lot of improvements in software tools that can make our customers more productive so what that really means is to be able to use common frameworks across different applications by a click of the button.

These kind of software technologies will be made available in the next one and two years. In terms of growth opportunities, If you look at NI’s business there are two major competences, one is the test side of our business and the other is the embedded side of our business. On the test side of our business we see a lot of growth whether it be smart devices or consumer Internet of Things. All the devices need to be tested so there is a lot of growth there. Almost every single device that comes out nowadays is multifunction. There are at least two or three technologies converging in that device.

A bicycle is still a bicycle but if you just look at the technology in the bicycle you get anything from a $50 bicycle to $15,000 bicycle, so as devices get more complex the testing increases a lot and that itself is an increasing market for us.

Now on the other side, the embedded side, yes we have the Industrial Internet of Things, that is one side, but you also have machines that continuously require improvements in their machine condition monitoring. For example, we see the ability to monitor a large number of assets, for instance, railways. In Singapore, if you have a better way to test the tracks before they get spoilt, whether it is an electrical or a mechanical device. To be able to monitor these large number of assets and be able to map that to improvements.