Cost efficiency and high productivity ensure the success of Scandinavia’s largest blow moulding company
Swedish subcontractors are characterised by a high degree of automation and well-developed, intelligent industrial processes. The result is high quality and excellent delivery reliability.
This makes these companies highly competitive on the global market in terms of total landed costs, concludes an analysis by the Scandinavian Automotive Supplier Association (FKG).
One of the exhibitors at FKG’s Swedish pavilion at the IAA in Hannover is BlowtechGroup Sweden. The company is investing heavily in the market’s most modern production technology in order to further strengthen its position as Scandinavia’s largest blow moulding supplier to the automotive industry.
The aim is zero-fault products, which benefits Blowtech’s OEM customers like Volvo, Scania and Renault.
“They get better quality and lower costs. Our strategy is to invest in increasingly intelligent processes so we can achieve zero-fault production right from the start,” says Klas Jansson, the owner and engineering director of BlowtechGroup.
“By this we mean total automation – that is, the materials handling, processing and quality control are all fully automated.”
The company has invested three million EUR in 2014 to purchase and develop a technology that produces the highest quality. Blowtech’s customers have invested the same amount in tools. The result is no disruptions in the production process and greatly improved cost efficiency.
But it’s a challenge!
Blow moulding is an imprecise process in the sense that it is hard to calculate the variations in the plastic. As a result, the machines must be able to identify and reject irregular components as soon as possible. That is why there are continual checks at each step to verify it has been completed correctly or the component is not allowed to proceed.
Simply put, the new machines act to rein in the variations in the plastic material.
“I tend to say that injection moulding is a science and blow moulding is an art,” Jansson says.
The intelligent blow moulding processes mean that all the finished components are, for example, already pressure tested and weighed when the machines pop them out.
The company currently has 34 machines for blow moulding and about 20 robots for other processing. The order book is proof that the investments in automation and intelligent industrial processes are paying off.
A totally new automatic production cell for air ducts has just been installed in the factory.
Blowtech’s biggest production for the European market is components for various types of air distribution in trucks.
BlowtechGroup is one of fifteen companies exhibiting at the Scandinavian stand being organised by FKG at the IAA in Hannover from 24 September to 2 October.
FKG - Fordonskomponentgruppen
CEO: Fredrik Sidahl
fredrik.sidahl@fkg.se
46 706 80 59 53
www.fkg.se
Facts: FKG – Fordonskomponentgruppen
FKG is the Scandinavian automotive supplier association. Member companies range from large, global so-called Tier 1-suppliers and medium-sized engineering companies to small start-ups, often build around innovation. FKG is situated on Gothenburg, Sweden and has 380 member companies.
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