Amn june 2013

ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

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SUCCESS THROUGH INNOVATION www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

June 2013 • $8 per copy • $40.00 digital per annum

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

Editorial JUNE 2013

Innovation walking away

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n the factory floor creative workers manufacturer products which keep companies going...it’s as simple as that.

These workers are dedicated to their company and have over a long period of time developed skills and expertise which make them important to a company’s success and longevity.

And how do we reward this dedication and commitment to a company? Because, after all, if they were not so committed and dedicated then chances are companies may not exist.

In our highly sophisticated work places today, all skilled employees have the ability to go one step further; whether it be 3D manufacturing, or Lean, or with nano technology. We place in the hands of the employee the tools for them to each be self-sufficient and frankly walk away from the company they work for and start their own business.

And this of course has been happening for hundreds of years and is one of the reasons that there is such a cluttered manufacturing environment across Asia. Every second door houses a small business contracting their manufacturing services to Honda, or Toshiba or Dell.

So we are a highly skilled and mobile workforce for the world. And we are cluttering the world up always looking for the opportunity to make that one product in our company to make the world a better place and our board of directors rich.

The point to this Editorial is this – if we continue to use refined technology in our companies the point must come, surely, of oversupply of products, of fierce competition because of the number of companies large and small competing with each other.

Why is there not more amalgamation of small companies together for a better end result? Where the highly trained staff does not get frustrated and go and start their own business which only dilutes the effort? www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

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GLOBAL MARKET FOR EXPANDABLE POLYSTYRENE

lobal demand development for expandable polystyrene (EPS) in the construction and packaging industries will slow down, but continues. Important factors are the recovery of the construction sector after the financial and economic crisis in 2008/09, state-funded programs to improve energy efficiency, and increasing wealth and population in emerging countries.

NEWS❒❒❒❒❒❒ 4 LOCAL RULES IN SOUTH EAST ASIA 8 INFOCOMM RESEARCH WITH COMPETITIVE COMPANIES

10 WILL ABENOMICS RAISE WAGES? 12 MTA VIETNAM TO SHOWCASE

MANUFACTURING SOLUTIONS

13 NESTLÉ TO BUILD NESCAFE COFFEE CENTRE IN CHINA

14 THE CASE FOR TPM IN LEAN INITIATIVES

19 UTAC TO CO-DEVELOP 2.5D FOR VOLUME MANUFACTURING

19 PANASONIC ADDS WASHING MACHINE PRODUCTION IN VIETNAM

ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

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18 NANOTECHNOLOGY: 6

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NEW BENDING TECHNOLOGY

ccording to estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the energy demand of the world population will increase drastically in the coming years: in 2030, around 5.5 billion people will have access to the electricity supply – this is equivalent to growth of 1.5 billion consumers within only slightly more than two decades.

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COLOUR PRINTING REACHES NEW HIGHS

ommercial laser printers typically produce pin-sharp images with spots of ink about 20 micrometers apart, resulting in a resolution of 1,200 dots per inch (dpi). By shrinking the separation to just 250 nanometres — roughly 100 times smaller — a research team at A*STAR can now print images at an incredible 100,000 dpi, the highest possible resolution for a colour image. These images could be used as minuscule anti-counterfeit tags or to encode high-density data.

NEWS❒❒❒❒❒❒

NEWS❒❒❒❒❒❒

20 CONFERENCE PROGRAM REVEALED

30 LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF ERP

FOR LABEL SUMMIT INDONESIA 2013

21 ILLIG AT CHINAPLAS 2013 22 THE VALUE OF LIGHTWEIGHT ASSISTIVE MANUFACTURING SOLUTIONS

26 A GIANT LEAP FOR POLYMER SOLAR CELL (PSC)

27 MAINLAND CHINA COMPANIES SEEK INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN U.S.

28 MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISE

IN ASIA - SIZE STRUCTURE AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

29 NANOSTRUCTURES FOR HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS

33 TANAKA OBTAINS ACCREDITATION FOR SILVER ANALYSIS TECHNOLOGY

34 WHERE TO TOMORROW...?

Asia Manufacturing News is published bi-monthly and offers the reader business information and news. Asia Manufacturing News welcomes editorial contributions and encourages readers to share their reflections and views with us. Asia Manufacturing News uses information provided in good faith. We give no guarantee of accuracy of the information. No liability is accepted for the result of any actions taken or not taken on the basis of this information. Those acting on the information and recommendations do so entirely at their own risk.

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

business news

Local rules in south east Asia

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usiness in neighbouring southeast Asia is alive and well and facing many of the same corporate responsibility problems as China.

Enterprise event, working with the government and community organisations, including the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the Singapore Dragon Boat Association and the Singapore Sailing Federation.

In most places local issues take precedence. Malaysia’sAstro, the country’s largest Pay TV service, has been behind a major deepsea cleaning process in Sabah on the Borneo coast involving 139 divers cleaning the seabed and relocating precious coral. Astro has of course televised much of the underwater action, raising awareness of seabed conservation.

Across in Indonesia corporate responsibility is at a slightly earlier stage than in Malaysia or Singapore, and still more focused on philanthropy. One interesting initiative is from the country’s largest pawnshop operator, Pegadaian, a state-run company.

Corporate responsibility has been promoted in Malaysia in recent years through the actions of the Kuala Lumpur stock exchange, pushing companies to include corporate responsibility statements in their filings. Consequently, many Malaysian main board-listed companies have a prominent corporate responsibility policy.

However, James Pereira, a local reputation and marketing consultant, believes many companies have a way to go yet, saying that a lot use corporate responsibility activities as a tax write-off and have a “been there, done that” attitude.

Singapore has an advanced corporate responsibility sector, as might be expected of a modern service-oriented economy.

Certainly the rush of new global companies, especially in the finance sector, that have expanded their operations there in recent years has boosted this responsibility trend.

Many have been seeking to be good community citizens. For instance, the local DBS Bank has undertaken a programme to open up the Marina Bay harbour to the public. The company has sponsored the DBS Marina Regatta and a DBS Social www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

Aware of the fact that pawnshops don’t always have the best reputation among many consumers, being seen by some as part of the problem of poverty rather than a solution, Pegadaian (which is highly profitable) recently donated an ambulance to a charity for the poor and announced the provision of free health services in central Jakarta. The company also sponsors three orphanages.

Land grabs Other firms operating in Indonesia also suffer from poor PR and have been ramping up their efforts to counter the negative publicity their operations attract.

The oil and gas industry is one such sector, with land acquisitions a particularly contentious issue.

Pertamina EP, part of the state energy firm, is one company that has run into local community objections over land acquisitions.

After some demonstrations and problems between guards and local communities in Palembang, Pertamina has significantly increased its stakeholder engagement activities, liaising with local groups. Critics say it is just trying to buy off local objectors, but others see this as the start of a possibly more progressive outreach programme by the energy giant.

By Paul French

Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam are attracting attention as alternative sourcing points for China.

However, issues as diverse as workers’ rights and preservation of heritage are all appearing.

For instance, the Angkor Gold Corporation, an American publicly traded gold explorer operating in Cambodia, has launched a corporate responsibility programme after locals voiced concerns about its activities.

Angkor Gold is sponsoring elected village development committees as well as planting fruit trees, digging wells and running family planning and health educations sessions.

In communist Vietnam, corporate responsibility faces many of the challenges seen in China. But that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. The Hanoi-based Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry has started monitoring the local corporate responsibility situation and instituted an annual awards scheme. It seems foreign companies will lead the way – for instance, HSBC recently partnered with the Dariu Foundation and Maison Chance to work with disadvantaged Vietnamese children through projects worth $500,000.

This is a pattern becoming more common across southeast Asia – initiatives are popping up in response to local issues, both in developed economies and, perhaps more importantly, in those emerging markets where corporate responsibility has previously been a very secondary consideration.

Paul French has been based in China for more than 20 years and is a partner in the research publisher Access Asia-Mintel. u

ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

analysis

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Global market for expandable Polystyrene

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lobal demand development for expandable polystyrene (EPS) in the construction and packaging industries will slow down, but continues. Important factors are the recovery of the construction sector after the financial and economic crisis in 2008/09, state-funded programs to improve energy efficiency, and increasing wealth and population in emerging countries.

Average growth rates of 4.8% p.a. that have been generated in the previous eight years are unlikely to be reached again, but the international market research institute Ceresana nevertheless expects consumption to increase at an AAGR of 3.8% in the next eight years.

An expected market volume of more than US$15 billion in 2020 shows that the market for EPS is well worth a closer examination.

Growth Motor Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific already is the most important consumer of EPS worldwide, accounting for about 54% of global demand, followed

by Western and Eastern Europe.

Distribution of market shares is likely to change notably in the upcoming eight year period.

Market analysts forecast AsianPacific countries to continue to gain shares of the global EPS market, mostly at the expense of saturated industrialized countries in Western Europe and North America. Developing and emerging countries, on the other hand, can capitalize on an increasing per capita consumption of packaging materials and other EPS-based products.

The by far most important growth motor on the international market is China.

Changes in regional demand will also have an effect on the production structure of manufacturers. Current EPS capacities of more than 10 million tonnes will be expanded by over 1 million tonnes. Almost 43% of these new capacities will be created in Asia-Pacific.

Regional Differences This most comprehensive report worldwide analyses how the utilisation of EPS will develop on individual markets.

Due to its technical properties such as low weight, rigidity, and formability, this material can be used in a wide range of different applications. It may be used as heat insulation, cold and sound insulation, in the packaging industry or in the manufacturing of recreational and sports products.

One of the major application areas is the construction sector that accounted for more than 61% of total demand in 2012.

European countries in particular record a widespread use of EPS in the construction sector, as a range

of state-funded programs target at improving energy efficiency.

All around the world, EPSbased products are used in the construction of new residential building and in the refurbishment of old buildings. Even on saturated markets, this can create growth impulses because EPS consumption in the construction sector is expected to increase by 4.1% per year.

Packaging made from EPS that is, for example, used to transport fresh fish or electronic goods, account for more than a third of global demand. Especially in Asia-Pacific and South America EPS products are accounting for a significant share of total demand.

Other EPS-based products include recreational goods such as helmets, cores for surfboards, life jackets or foam cups for hot beverages.

A particularly large consumption volume in this segment is recorded in North America, last but not least due to a comparatively high consumption of foam cups. EPS is also used in child safety seats, casting molds, and horticultural applications. Taken together, all these applications accounted for about 4% of global demand. u

Community Planning, Sustainable Business and Waste Minimisation Strategies www.envision-nz.com

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

developments

New bending technology fo

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ccording to estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the energy demand of the world population will increase drastically in the coming years: in 2030, around 5.5 billion people will have access to the electricity supply – this is equivalent to growth of 1.5 billion consumers within only slightly more than two decades.

To meet the increased energy demand, in addition to investment in renewable energies, the construction of new power plants and modernisation of existing facilities in particular are vital.

advantages with respect to safety, subsequent maintenance and the requirements of the present tube parameters as well as last but not least appreciable benefits in terms of manufacturing costs and times.

One critical criterion here is to significantly improve efficiency in the power plant process. The requirements for the installed tube systems and tube materials are therefore also increasing, as they make a noticeable contribution to increasing efficiency.

Efficient production of manifolds, steam and pressure lines

Special bending machines have been developed for precisely this application area, which bend high-strength, thick-walled high-pressure tubes as well as boiler tubes, tube coils and entire membrane tube walls accurately and both time and cost-effectively.

The requirements for liquid and steam line systems in modern power plants are increasing: significantly higher pressure, flow and temperature values result in increasing strain on the systems.

At the same time, the legal constraints and requirements are intensifying. Leakages can result for example in costly repairs or – which is worse – investigations, fines and even a deactivation order from the relevant regulatory authorities.

This makes the use of durable, safe and effective tube systems and solutions all the more important.

Whereas thick-walled highpressure tubes and pipes have been welded together for decades from various straight and pre-bent tube components, modern tube bending processes offer significant www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

The semi-automatic SR 320 tube bending machine and the automatic CNC 320 HD produce complex tube systems in one operation from a single tube for pressure and steam lines, manifolds and similar tubes. Being equipped with special tools, the machines bend thin and thickwalled tubes with a maximum diameter of 323.9 x 17.5 mm.

With a tube size of 323.9 x 10 mm, for example, they have no problem producing a bending radius of 1.5 x D, which is equivalent to a bending radius of 485 mm in the example mentioned. The semi-automatic machines in the SR series are particularly suitable for the production of single bends and small series.

The automatic, CNC-controlled machines are also suited to complex tube systems with several bends or large batch sizes.

Whereas hot shaping of these work pieces takes around eight hours, customers require an average of only six minutes for one bend.

The machines are from a heavy duty machine series for various diameters and wall thicknesses up to 610 x 21.4 mm. They are

available in semi-automatic design with SR control and in automatic design with CNC control. All machines can be equipped e.g. with a tube magazine and tube feed and enlarged up to fully automatic bending cells.

Economical production of boiler tubes and tube serpentines Very different but similarly exacting requirements now also exist for boiler tubes and tube serpentines in power plant construction. The production of smaller boilers with greater capacity, for example, requires the use of extremely tightly bent tubes. Depending on the tube diameter, it is not uncommon for the required minimum bending radius to be 1xD (sometimes under 1xD).

The semi-automatic booster bending machines and automatic CNC pressure bending machines are designed precisely for these requirements. The unique coldbending process offers utmost precision and surpasses the tolerance requirements for wall thinning and out-of-roundness e.g. of European standard EN 12952, American Society of Mechanical Engineers ASME B31.1 and all other international standards.

The CNC-controlled booster bending machines are also equipped with a tube positioning device, which facilitates fully automatic bending of tube systems.

For efficient processing of very large and complex tube serpentines, there is the CNC Twin series machines which is available in three different sizes up to diameter 88.9 x 11 mm and uses two vertically and horizontally movable bending heads (1x left-bending, 1x rightbending), which alternately

developments

ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

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or energy efficiency systems bend the tube clockwise and anticlockwise.

Consequently, the tube serpentine does not need turning after each bend, which ensures quick and economical production processes and the manufacture of large leg lengths. Moreover it is possible to produce different bending radii within one tube system.

Precise processing of complex tube walls Schwarze-Robitec also offer a specialised bending technology for the bending of entire membrane tube walls, which is common in the construction of modern boilers and power plants: the FL machine series processes tube walls with a maximum width of 3,600 mm and a length of 25,000 mm or more quickly and accurately by means of the compression bending process. The machines are equipped with a most modern CNC control, which also takes into account e.g. the springback when bending the membrane tube wall. Only recently, the bending specialists delivered one of the world’s largest membrane tube wall bending machines to an Indian customer. With this machine, costumers are able to bent tube walls precisely in particularly large dimensions, the users secure considerably reduced costs and production times as well as lower installation costs. Equally, this machine offers the option of diagonal bending. “Overall, we have been developing and producing tube cold bending machines designed especially for the specific requirements of power plant construction for over 45 years,” SchwarzeRobitec Managing Director Bert Zorn summarises. “Every machine is a customised solution, which we adapt precisely to the individual production needs of the customer.” u

The FL 3600 tube bending machine from Schwarze-Robitec guarantees the quick and economical production of huge membrane tube walls.

The SR 320 tube bending machine from Schwarze-Robitec produces complete tube systems for manifolds, pressure and steam lines from one work piece within a few minutes.

The CNC 100 DB Twin booster bending machine from Schwarze-Robitec reliably bends even high-strength materials with a bending radius under 1xD. www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

manufacturing trends

Infocomm Research with competitive companies

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SINGAPORE:

he Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) has announced two collaborations with ST Electronics (Info-Comm Systems) and Singapore Power in the areas of Software Defined Communications systems and Grid Networks respectively.

The collaborations are in line with I2R’s directions to develop a wide spectrum of capabilities in the Intelligence, Communications and Multi-media (ICM) sectors of the industry.

will set up joint laboratories with I2R’s in Fusionopolis to deepen the technological capabilities, and to drive innovation and advance technology in their respective fields.

The partnerships were announced at I2R’s ICM Outreach 2013 event held at Raffles City Convention Centre (Fairmont Hotel). At the event, I2R also showcased technologies developed in its laboratories that are ready to be adopted by companies.

The I2R-STEE Info-Comm joint laboratory will develop advanced Software Defined Communication systems as well as train ST engineers in conceptualisation and design. .

The research institute showcased its Sense and Sense-abilities programme, a part of urban solution system that provides real-time information from a wide range of sensors for government agencies to make better and informed decisions provide a safe and clean environment for city dwellers to live in.

In particular, the Institute showcased the Snap2Tell mobile application, an image recognition technology that allowed users to obtain extensive information and understand its surrounding environment simply by snapping a photo. They also showcased their “Hush-Hush” mobile security application that enabled users to send confidential contents to each other via Near Field Communication (NFC) technology through Secure SMS (short message service) and Secure MMS (multi-media messaging service).

Supporting Globally Competitive Companies (GCC) ST Electronics (Info-Comm Systems) and Singapore Power www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

This will equip ST Electronics to compete internationally as well as locally with in– house designed advanced communication products for different customised applications.

The I2R-Singapore Power joint laboratory will develop capabilities and solutions to enhance the reliability of Singapore’s grid networks.

Enabling businesses with innovative technologies I2R researchers were also honoured for their win at 2012 GE Flight Quest by Chairman of A*STAR, Mr Lim Chuan Poh and Mr. Brian Selby, Vice President of Global Business Development, GE Idea Works through an award ceremony held at the ICM Outreach event.

More than 175 teams formed from the world’s best data scientists took part in this international competition which aimed to help GE make flights more efficient and punctual. The Singaporebased team successfully beat flight time predictions from expert air traffic controllers by 40 percent. Commercial airlines can potentially use the algorithm

developed by the team to predict gate and runway arrivals of their flights more accurately, saving fuel and time. (For more info, please see www.gequest.com/c/flight) I2R’s spin-off company takes off In line with Singapore’s demand for technopreneurship, I2R has spun off start-up companies founded on cutting-edge technologies. An example of a successful I2R spin-off company is iTwin, which specialises in simple network privacy and security solutions.

The founders of the company are ex-I2R researchers who have used their expertise in bringing the start-up company to new frontiers. The company has been winning awards since it first started in 2009.They have won the Popular Mechanics CES 2013 Editor’s Choice Award this year. In 2012, the company was awarded the “Most Innovative Infocomm Product” in the National Infocomm Awards 2012.

Bringing impact to Singapore’s infocomm industry As a globally competitive source of infocomm innovations, I2R’stechnologies made a difference to corporate organisations looking for an edge in the global marketplace as well as local businesses looking to tap into our exciting new technologies to expand beyond their home markets.

“We are pleased to work with I2R in developing capabilities and solutions to enhance the reliability of our power grid networks.

This exciting collaboration will bring us to new frontiers in smart grid technology to enable energy efficiency and sustainable solutions for our customers.” said Mr. Chuah Kee Heng, Head, Strategic Development of Singapore Power. u

ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

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10THOUSANDTREES.com Continues page 27

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

analysis

U

Will Abenomic

nder the first arrow of Abenomics, Bank of Japan is conducting aggressive quantitative easing policy. Japanese expectations of economic restoration are increasing, however, there are also concerns that, even with the overcoming of deflation and the price stability target of 2% inflation being achieved, difficulties in people’s lives will continue if wages will not rise to match inflation.

Accordingly, the development of wages is receiving a great attention in Japan. In order to deal with the situation, the Prime Minister made an unusual request for the leaders of big companies to raise compensation for their employees.

Here, I would like to consider the relationship between decisions regarding wages and the features of the labour market in Japan.

Figure 1 tells that, the change of hourly nominal wage fluctuated positively until the mid­1990s, however, it fell below 0% after 1998. In particular, it dropped significantly after the financial crisis in 2008. These casual observations tell us that Japan’s typical response to negative shocks after the 1990’s was to cut wages in nominal terms. A series of flexible downward adjustments decreased the hourly actual wage to almost the same level as in 1995.

These wage cuts is a special feature observed only in Japan (at least so far), which has not been common in other advanced countries. For example, a survey conducted for euro area firms by the European Central Bank reports that the percentage of firms that had experienced a wage cut accounted only about 2%, even after the financial crisis in 2008.

So why wage cuts are common in Japan, but less so in other countries? There are several possible reasons which come from the differences in the characteristics of each country’s labour market. The first difference lies in the framework of determining wages.

In markets where a wage raise is negotiated across industries and www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

Figure 1 shows the year to year change of hourly nominal wage of regular employees and the inflation rate from consumer price index to observe how wages in Japan shifted under low inflation and deflation since 1990.

occupations, there is a risk that workers may consider it unfair for individual companies to perform wage cuts against it. Companies therefore choose to lay off workers instead to avoid cutting wages of remaining workers and prevent the deterioration of morale.

negative shocks, such as hoarding employees who have accumulated firm specific skills with the large training costs. As a result, the unemployment rate in Japan has been shifting steadily low relative to the rates of other countries.

In Japan, on the other hand, it is common for a company to negotiate wages individually with its employees, and as a result, the wage negotiation is likely to reflect matters such as corporate performance and prospects. The second difference is that bonuses account for a large amount of annual income in Japan.

However, such practice also causes a lack of mobility of the Japanese labour market. In a market where the labour mobility is inactive, workers are likely to accept a wage cut and unpaid overtime in exchange for staying employed for fear of the difficulty of finding a new job as a regular employee after being dismissed from their current positions.

This allows the annual income to adjust flexibly by increasing or decreasing bonuses according to economic fluctuations. These features of determining wages had functioned well in the Japanese labour market for a long time. It serves as an effective measure to protect workers from short-term

Moreover, under the prolonged depression, some point out that such a downward flexibility in wages is making the country difficult to get out from deflation.

That is, the situation with wage cuts traps individual companies in a negative spiral: although the wage cut makes it possible

analysis

ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

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cs raise wages? to lower the prices of goods and services while protecting employment in a micro level, since each firm takes the same strategy, the consequence is that the macro price level also decreases.

Therefore, the competitiveness of individual companies will not be improved, which leads to a further wage cuts.

In order to move away from the negative spiral, improving the condition of the labour market is necessary. To prepare various outside options other than the wage cut for workers and to promote mobility of labour to industry with an international comparative advantage, it is necessary to change the labour market from one with only bipolar ways of working that is, the “regular employees, who have a relatively low risk of losing a job, but who are forced to be transferred anytime anywhere and work long hours,” or “non-regular employees, who have a high risk of losing a job, but who can choose working hours and workplace relatively freely,” to one where workers can choose what they like or what is suitable for their current stage of life from various packages of wages and labour conditions.

Preferred labour conditions may vary depending on the employee’s age and life stage. If various possible combinations regarding wages and labour conditions become available, and the labour market can be developed to one where workers can move between these options smoothly, both labour productivity and real wages may improve due to the increase in efficiency in the matching between workers and employers.

Furthermore, it would also lead to the utilisation of a non-labour workforce who have hitherto resigned from working. Some measures, currently considered by Japanese government to strengthen growth, such as introducing a

system of quasi-regular employees with job descriptions limited to certain areas and jobs or extending the childcare leaves to three years may be the first step for the society toward diversity. Some suggest, however, that this is difficult since it may cast a large burden for firms to implement, and there are not so many needs from workers who wish to work under such conditions.

To this end, the following is a digest of a survey that was conducted through 719 firms and 4,439 employees. This survey asked both firms and employees a hypothetical question, “How much cost should be incorporated into the wage to implement (1) a generous childcare and familycare leaves (that exceed those with the current law) and (2) a short working-hour program?”

Figures 2(1) and 2(2) show the results. According to the figures, an overwhelming majority of employees responded with either “a wage cut to cover the introduction is not acceptable (wage premium of 0%)” or “a wage cut to the extent of 10 to 20% is acceptable,” while the overwhelming majority of firms responded that “an introduction is totally unacceptable (wage premium of -100%),” which demonstrates a huge gap between employer and employees.

Since various ways of working did not prevail in Japan for a long

time and bipolar ways of working become the norm of the society, many firms may believe that there would be enormous direct and indirect costs to provide other ways of working. However, when limiting samples to the employees and firms who were willing to accept the introduction of the system, the average wage premium for introducing a child care and family care leaves were: employees -33.8%, firms -8.3%, while those of the short working-hour program premium were: employees -27.8%, firms -11.0%.

That is, the firms that considered there to be a possibility for introducing the system think it is feasible if an average wage cut of approximately 10% was implemented to introduce the policy, while workers expected a flexible way of working even with a wage cut of approximately 30%.

These results suggest that various combinations regarding wage and labour conditions can be provided without additional costs, and that there is a possibility to increase the welfare of employees, if companies can understand the potential needs of employees. In the future labour market in Japan, we are required to change our mindsets by shifting from the singular thought of wage cuts for protecting employment to the thought of creating new combinations of wages and labor conditions corresponding to various needs.u

Distribution of Wage premiums for each policy based on the hypothetical question Reference): Kuroda and Yamamoto (2013) Notes: The employee samples are limited to women. The average wage premiums are calculated by excluding both employees who suggest 0 % wage cuts and firms suggest 100% wage cuts from samples . www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

events

MTA Vietnam to showcase manufacturing solutions

HO CHI MINH CITY:

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ith a gathering of more than 60 Taiwanese firms at the Saigon Exhibition & Convention Centre (SECC), MTA VIETNAM2013 will unveil its biggest ever showcase of Taiwanese machine tools and metal working equipment. Held annually, the largest manufacturing solutions industry event in Vietnam will run from 2 - 5 July 2013 and feature 11 international group pavilions from eight countries/regions together with world class machine tool brands from Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, UK and USA.

A 37 per cent square metre increase from last edition, the Taiwan showcase will be housed under the umbrella of three group pavilions organised by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), the Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders’ Association (TMBA), and the Taiwan Fluid Power Association (TFPA). The growing presence of Taiwanese firms at MTA VIETNAM is representative of shared strong trade and economic ties, especially in the area of manufacturing.

TAITRA, who has exhibited at MTA VIETNAM since the event was established in 2005, has arranged for 22 leading Taiwanese machine tool brands to showcase a series of Taiwan Excellence award winningproducts. “The Taiwan Excellence award is the highest accolade given to products that only represent the most revolutionary, high quality, high value added products made in Taiwan, but also display the use of innovation to create added value in the design and manufacturing of leading-edge products. We are proud to present the best of Taiwan’s machine tools and equipment to the Vietnamese market,” says Mr. Timothy Tso, Director, Taiwan Trade Center in Ho Chi Minh City.

is TMBA who will be bringing more than 30 companies to display a wide selection of the latest Made-in-Taiwan technologies and solutions.

Mr. Carl Huang, President of TMBA says, “The TMBA and its members are excited to be back in Vietnam to re-connect with the manufacturing community at MTA VIETNAM2013. Many of our participating companies this year have exhibited at the show before and are certainly looking forward to it.”

Exhibiting for the first time is TFPA, who has over 200 members that are mainly hydraulic and pneumatic small to medium enterprise manufacturers. 14 of these companies will be exhibiting at MTA VIETNAM 2013. “Expanding our members’ business activities has been a key objective of our association. This year, we have chosen MTA VIETNAM2013 as the main event for our members to reach out to Vietnam’s booming manufacturing sector,” comments Mr. Barton Yu, Chairman of TFPA. “As one of the leading producers of industrial machinery, we are glad to see a growing presence

of Taiwanese firms at MTA VIETNAM. They bring with them a wide array of solutions that can be applied to the numerous manufacturing sectors in Vietnam.

Their competitive edge in terms of quality and cost effectiveness makes them an ideal choice for local Vietnamese manufacturers,” says Mr. William Lim, Project Director for MTA VIETNAM2013 from the show’s organiser, Singapore Exhibition Services (SES).

Taiwan ranks third in the world’s machine tool exports industry, behind only to Germany and Japan, with exports reaching US$4.2 billion in 2012, up 5.9 per cent year on year. Machine tools are now the nation’s biggest machinery category, with around 75 per cent of production volume exported to regions such as China, the European Union, ASEAN nations and the United States.(1) Taiwanese firms also have a large manufacturing footprint in Vietnam. Wintek Group, a global leading manufacturer of touch panels and mobile phone displays has two factories with two more being constructed in Quang Chau Industrial Park in Bac Giang province, with an estimated price tag of US$930 million.(2) Similarly, Foxconn - the largest manufacturer of electronics and computer components worldwide, also has two manufacturing facilities spanning 1.1 hectares, specialising in producing camera modules, main boards and connectors, in Que Vo Industrial Park in northern Bac Ninh province.(3)

Back at the MTA series in Vietnam for the seventh time (1) Taiwan’s machine tool sector on a roll, Taiwan Representative office in Singapore, 4 April 2013.

(2) Wintek Vietnam - Treasure Talents, Vietnam Business Forum, 28 November 2012.

(3) Foxconn inaugurates first two factories in Vietnam, The Ministry of Finance, 29 August 2007. www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

developments

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Nestlé to build Nescafe coffee centre in China

SWITZERLAND:

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estlé is helping to accelerate the development of China’s coffee industry with the construction of new facilities that will provide farmers with training in improved growing techniques, at the same time as promoting the beverage to more consumers.

The company has signed a memorandum of understanding with the local government in Pu’er, Yunnan province, agreeing to invest in a Nescafé Coffee Centre in the region that will include a coffee farming institute and a ‘consumer experience centre’.

The institute, which will be the largest of its kind in China, will provide training to 5,000 farmers, agronomists, and coffee business professionals every year.

The experience centre will be used to raise the profile of coffee

grown in Yunnan province among consumers from China and the rest of the world.

The site will also provide much-needed infrastructure to support rapidly expanding coffee production in the region.

It will offer modern warehousing facilities and a quality testing laboratory that will help to set local benchmarks against international standards.

Marking 25 years “We have worked with farmers and the local authorities in Yunnan province for 25 years to

develop the region into a worldclass coffee growing district,” said Heiko Schipper, Managing Director of Nestlé’s Food and Beverage Division in the Greater China region.

“Over that time, our agronomists have provided more than 8,500 farmers with free agricultural assistance and training in improved growing techniques.

“This new centre is a continuation of our long-term investment in the future of coffee production and consumption in China,” he added.

Promoting coffee The Nescafé Coffee Centre in Pu’er will give consumers the opportunity to learn about the origins of coffee growing in the region and to sample different blends.

It is a continuation of Nestle’s efforts to promote coffee to Chinese consumers.

In 2012 the company launched a new version of its Nescafe 1+2 Original instant coffee, based on extensive research that found Chinese consumers now expect a richer, more aromatic taste with more balanced, milky flavours. u

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lean manufacturing

The Case for TPM

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ost business owners and general managers recognize just how critically important proper equipment maintenance is, particularly in an asset-oriented work environment. Simply put, poorly maintained equipment leads to production downtime, lost revenue, dissatisfied customers, and low morale.

Yet, in the context of lean initiatives, debates crop up regarding the role of preventive and predictive maintenance versus Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). Are preventive and predictive maintenance tactics sufficient? Isn’t TPM a separate initiative, a secondary consideration, or just plain extraneous to a primary lean implementation? Or, should lean and TPM be interconnected?

In too many companies, equipment initiatives stop with preventive and predictive maintenance.

TPM is a capability built on total asset reliability and total employee involvement more than traditional preventive maintenance, is a systematic, data-driven process that fosters an efficient partnership between production, maintenance, and engineering, and that engages those closest to the work. It results in an organisation’s ability to transition from reactive to proactive maintenance and to create low cost, even free capacity.

More importantly, TPM has a dramatic impact on your organisational culture, overall operations and your bottom line.

It frees up valuable production capacity without the drain of capital investment.

The direct and measureable results are better performance, increased capacity, improved quality, decreased scrap and waste, and increased reliability and efficiency.

Without TPM, achieving lean is not possible; therefore TPM should be an integral part of any lean www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

transformation.

TPM evolved as an offshoot of Total Quality Management (TQM), when the problems of plant maintenance were examined as a part of TQM programs. At the time, preventive maintenance (PM) had been considered the major component of a production bar, traditional maintenance program.

In attempts to improve production, maintenance equipment reliability was seen as schedules designed to keep machines operational were often revved up to the point of over-servicing. Yet, there was little or no involvement of the machine operator in the maintenance program, and maintenance personnel had little training beyond the (often inadequate) contents of maintenance manuals.

The need to go further than conventional scheduled maintenance as a method of improving productivity and product quality was quickly recognised by companies who committed to TQM. As they kept raising the production bar, they demanded better and better machine reliability, and began to see reliability as the key to greater efficiency and higher productivity.

In essence, TPM is a strategy that empowers employees by enlisting equipment operators to participate actively in the design, selection, correction, and maintenance of equipment. The objective: to ensure that every machine or production process is always able to perform its required tasks without interrupting or slowing down defect-free production.

Operators share ‘ownership’ for the equipment with which they work.

TPM is viewed as ‘beginning-toend maintenance’ that is critically

lean manufacturing

ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

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M in Lean Initiatives important to business success.

Downtime for maintenance is scheduled as a part of the manufacturing day and, in some cases, as an integral part of the manufacturing process.

It is no longer simply squeezed in whenever there is a break in material flow. The goal is to hold emergency and unscheduled maintenance to a minimum.

A fair analogy would go something like this:

• changing your car’s oil regularly is ‘preventive maintenance’;

• analysing the oil would be ‘predictive maintenance’;

• knowing the engine and

understanding what keeps it running smoothly would be ‘autonomous maintenance’;

• performing all of the above is TPM.

Why TPM? You cannot truly become lean or sustain lean gains without adopting a lean equipment management strategy that fosters and enables continuous machine reliability. Like lean, TPM is not a ‘program’. Rather, it is a step-bystep, systematic, strategic process that aims to achieve at least 90% equipment availability and 95% equipment performance. It involves the entire organisation and is the foundation upon which lean is built.

Many managers find this counterintuitive, because they’ve been taught to believe that the production schedule drives the maintenance schedule. In fact, the opposite is true.

Equipment is the bloodline of production. It needs to be kept in a constant state of order rather than being repaired only when needed. Planned downtime costs a company a mere 10% of

what it costs for an unplanned breakdown. That can add up to sizeable savings in every plant over the course of a year.

Unfortunately, in many companies TPM is viewed as a separate initiative that is optional in a lean environment. In others, managers haven’t yet recognised the symbiotic relationship between lean and TPM, and think they need to choose between the two. But the true objective of the lean/TPM partnership is the implementation of a total process that impacts virtually every aspect of operations and daily work.

It’s Not Just for the Maintenance Department Lean and TPM, and the transformation they can achieve together, require a vision that is shared by the entire employee community, one that can be turned into concrete and measurable objectives and that connects to all improvement activities throughout the entire organisation.

Production personnel learn to take ownership of their equipment, perform autonomous maintenance routines, and participate in the design processes for new equipment.

More on the ‘Total’ in TPM Traditional maintenance puts responsibility to react to problems primarily on the shoulders of the maintenance department. TPM, on the other hand, creates a shared and proactive responsibility for equipment, encouraging greater involvement by plant floor workers. In the right environment this approach can be extremely effective in improving productivity (increasing uptime, reducing cycle times, and eliminating defects).

TPM trains your people - not just your maintenance people

but also machine operators and others - to play an active role with equipment.

Effective TPM comprises a wide range of elements that take an organisation way beyond simple preventive or predictive maintenance:

The eight pillars of TPM

• Through Early Equipment Management, team members develop an important understanding of how the design and manufacture of equipment can help make it easier to operate, simpler to maintain, and right-sized for its purpose. The people who operate the equipment are involved in helping to reduce the complexity of real-time operation.

• By understanding the concept of Maintenance Improvement, team members evolve from a reactive to a proactive position.

They analyze breakdowns to better reveal machine weaknesses. They learn to modify equipment and manage replacement parts to improve operator maintainability.

And, they map out a planned maintenance schedules for longer service life.

• The long-term value of committing to a Comprehensive Training program ensures that people at all levels have the skills, and just as importantly the awareness, to support TPM effectively.

• The adoption of an Autonomous Maintenance program instils an ‘operator-based care’ philosophy, transferring basic equipment care responsibilities from maintenance staff to equipment operators. This frees up key maintenance employees

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lean manufacturing

to handle more specialized activities such as major overhauls, machine upgrades, predictive maintenance, and new equipment planning. At the same time, autonomous maintenance encourages a strong relationship between TPM and the efficiencies of 5S programs.

• A Quality Maintenance strategy commits your organisation to efforts that ensure equipment is maintained effectively throughout the entire production process. The objective is to eliminate defects - beginning with basic materials and continuing right on through to the finished product. This might include monitoring very specific machine features such as temperature, pressure and equipment flexibility.

• Finally, TPM enables you to get the most out of your machines by accurately measuring Overall Equipment Effectiveness. You’ll have the ability to determine the actual contribution of each piece of equipment as a percentage of its potential to add www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

value to your overall operations.

There may be no better example of implementing true ‘productive maintenance.’

Key Takeaways

Lean and TPM will have a profound and lasting effect on a company’s culture by emphasising the role of employees in virtually every step of the production and maintenance process.

These five key points capture the high-level view of TPM, what makes it tick, and its importance for your organization.

• Total Productive Maintenance impacts your organisation’s total operational process.

• It is designed to build and strengthen the capabilities of your people, your processes, and your equipment in order to maximize asset reliability and, ultimately, company profits.

• TPM cuts deeper than preventive and predictive maintenance routines, works hand in hand with your lean strategy, and is fundamental to achieving true flow.

• Without the proactive commitment and the everyday involvement of your workforce, TPM (like lean) is unsustainable.

• TPM transformations yield dramatic improvements in how employees perform

Successful TPM requires a mindset of commitment, an enterprise-wide strategy, recognition of what’s at stake, and an end goal of ‘World Class Status’ for your organisation.

Their jobs, in the relationship between employees and management, and in their ability to work in teams and react positively to change.u

Next Steps for Initiating or Reviving a TPM Rollout Developing a strategy to establish TPM - and integrate it as part of a lean transformation - begins with analysing and understanding the key areas that need to be improved throughout your operations. That involves establishing revenue goals, performing value stream analysis, creating key lean initiatives, identifying and sharing responsibilities for action items, and laying down milestones and rollout plans.

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www.flowform.net www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

advanced manufacturing

Nanotechnology: Colour printing reaches new highs

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ommercial laser printers typically produce pin-sharp images with spots of ink about 20 micrometers apart, resulting in a resolution of 1,200 dots per inch (dpi).

By shrinking the separation to just 250 nanometres — roughly 100 times smaller — a research team at A*STAR can now print images at an incredible 100,000 dpi, the highest possible resolution for a colour image. These images could be used as minuscule anti-counterfeit tags or to encode high-density data.

led the team of researchers at the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing.

Printing images in this way makes them potentially more durable than those created with conventional dyes. In addition, colour images cannot be any more detailed: two adjacent dots blur into one if they are closer than half the wavelength of the light reflecting from them. Since the wavelength of visible light ranges about 380–780 nanometres, the nanoposts are as close as is physically possible to produce a reasonable range of colours.

Although the process takes several hours, Yang suggests that a template for the nanoposts could rapidly stamp many copies of the image. “We are also exploring novel methods to control the polarisation of light with these nanostructures and approaches to improve the colour purity of the pixels,” he adds. u

To print the image, the team coated a silicon wafer with insulating hydrogen silsesquioxane and then removed part of that layer to leave behind a series of upright posts of about 95 nanometres high.

They capped these nanoposts with layers of chromium, silver and gold (1, 15 and 5 nanometres thick, respectively), and also coated the wafer with metal to act as a backreflector.

Each colour pixel in the image contained four posts at most, arranged in a square. The researchers were able to produce a rainbow of colours simply by varying the spacing and diameter of the posts to between 50 www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

nanometres and 140 nanometres.

When light hits the thin metal layer that caps the posts, it sends ripples — known as plasmons — running through the electrons in the metal.

The size of the post determines which wavelengths of light are absorbed, and which are reflected (see image).

The plasmons in the metal caps also cause electrons in the backreflector to oscillate. “This coupling channels energy from the disks into the backreflector plane, thus creating strong absorption that results in certain colours being subtracted from the visible spectrum,” says Joel Yang, who

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advanced manufacturing

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UTAC to co-develop 2.5D for volume manufacturing

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SINGAPORE:

*STAR’s IME and United Test and Assembly Centre (UTAC), are to develop a 2.5D Through-SiliconInterposer (TSI) platform which will enable UTAC to join the scarce list of suppliers in offering fine-pitch 2.5D TSI packaging solutions.

This collaboration builds on the technology expertise of both partners and leverages IME’s cutting-edge 300mm ThroughSilicon-Via (TSV)/TSI fabrication and assembly infrastructure to develop and prototype 2.5D TSIbased systems.

IME will contribute its deep R&D experience in design and advanced packaging to develop optimised solutions to address electrical, thermal, thermo-mechanical and reliability requirements for applications including mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones. The optimised 2.5D TSI

technology from this collaboration will be transferred to UTAC for high volume manufacturing, enabling UTAC to shorten their time-to-market significantly.

With the 2.5D/3D IC process technologies gradually being accepted by industry, IME has been actively engaging leading companies from the supply chain to drive the mass production of 2.5D/3D ICs. “IME’s strong commitment in accelerating industry adoption of 2.5D and 3DIC design and manufacturing as well as our

breadth of expertise in 200mm and 300mm back-end-of-line (BEOL) capabilities present an attractive value proposition to companies to collaborate with us,” said Prof. Dim-Lee Kwong, Executive Director of IME. “IME looks forward to working with our partners to develop innovative 3D IC solutions and carry 3D integration forward toward numerous applications that can be commercialised.”

“Leveraging on IME’s leading 3D IC capabilities, we believe that we will be able to better respond to market demands and support our customers with services that offer them faster time-to-market, strengthening our leadership in the 3D IC arena,” said Dr William John Nelson, Group President and Chief Executive Officer of UTAC.u

Panasonic adds washing machine production in Vietnam

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OSAKA:

anasonic Corporation has announced the opening of a new facility in Vietnam that houses a washingmachine manufacturing plant and an R&D centre. The facility is part of the company’s plans to drive and expand its home appliances business in the ASEAN region. Panasonic Appliances Vietnam Co. Ltd. (PAPVN), which operates the facility, held an opening ceremony on March 20 at the site in Thang Long Industrial Park in the northern province of Hung Yen.

The new factory will start mass production of top-loading washing machines in April this year with a production capacity of 600,000 units a year. The production will focus on energy-efficient and water-saving washing machines with Panasonic’s unique Econavi functions in addition to highperformance machines that offer a variety of wash cycles such as “gentle handwash,” “fragrance” and “baby care.”

One-half of the output will be for

the domestic market, and the remaining half will be exported to the other ASEAN countries and the Middle East. The factory will have about 300 employees in the fiscal year through March 2015 (FY 2015).

The R&D centre will design and develop refrigerators and washing machines as well as components and devices used in them in close cooperation with R&D centres in Japan and Panasonic’s production bases in the other

ASEAN countries.

In the future, the centre in Vietnam will serve as the focal point to coordinate Panasonic’s R&D activities in the region; PAPVN has been operating in Thang Long Industrial Park in Hanoi since 2003, manufacturing refrigerators for Vietnam and the other ASEAN countries, Hong Kong and the Middle East.

The new facility in the park strengthens PAPVN as the core base for Panasonic’s refrigerator and washing-machine businesses in ASEAN. PAPVN will accelerate efforts to nurture human resources who can support its R&D activities to develop and manufacture products tailored to each market.

Through these efforts, Panasonic aims to contribute to the economic development of Vietnam. u www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

events

Conference program revealed for Label Summit Indonesia 2013

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he conference program has been revealed as registration opens for the inaugural Label Summit Indonesia which is being held at the Westin Resort Nusa Dua in Bali between 29-30 May.

Focusing on the label and package printing industry, the Summit will comprise a mix of technical presentations, real life business case studies and the latest industry insight and business intelligence into market trends, conditions and challenges.

The Summit commences with a roundup of market trends with presentations by Multi-Colour Corporation’s Brenton Barrett who will look at global trends and Ariana Susanti of the Indonesian Packaging Federation who will explore the latest developments in South East Asia. In a printer panel discussion, converters from Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines will look at printing as part of the economy and future growth opportunities.

The afternoon’s sessions will address the latest available technologies, capabilities and applications. The keynote being delivered by HP Indigo’s Christian Menegon, will focus on making the move from a conventional to digital workflow and examine

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how the converter needs to adapt to cater for short run jobs. Other topics include creating value with 3D technologies and a guide to flexo technology, materials and performance.

Day two’s content has been developed to help identify new opportunities for business growth. Sri Yulianti, research and development packaging manager – home personal care from Unilever will consider how to implement a sustainable strategy for environmentally friendly packaging practices.

Supa Stik Label’s Pete Holywell will share secrets on how to transform your business using online marketing and social media platforms, while other subjects include effective anticounterfeiting solutions for brand protection.

Aimed at label and package printing converters, brand owners and designers, the Summit is complemented by a tabletop exhibition with exhibitors including Esko, Flint Group, Gallus, Mark Andy, Nilpeter, Omet, RotoMetrics and Stork Prints. In addition delegates will

also enjoy an evening reception and afternoon networking function.

Jade Grace, event director commented: “Label Summit Indonesia is designed to provide an insight into the South East Asian market place and focus on learning and developing best practice from the latest available technologies and trends. Delegates will find out how to maximize business growth opportunities and also how emerging technologies such as digital offer them new possibilities today, not just in the future.”

She concludes: “The consumption of labels and packaging in the region is set to escalate because lifestyle habits are changing. As already seen in other emerging markets such as China and India, this Westernized lifestyle quickly drives change across the supply chain and manufacturing process.

“The label and package printing industry here is in its infancy, but advances in using more sophisticated technologies, materials and marketing techniques will be fast tracked to keep up with demand. For those fortunate enough to be involved in this cycle, the commercial opportunities and benefits are immense as the Indonesia market matures.” u

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ILLIG at Chinaplas 2013

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HEIBONN, GERMANY:

t this year’s Chinaplas held from 20-23 May in Guangzhou/China, ILLIG will be exhibiting its RDM-K and RDK series automatic roll-fed machines embodying today’s state of the art in thermoforming.

The current 3rd generation RDM-K models are designed for the high-volume production of cups in diverse shapes and sizes from thermoplastic material stock.

RDK series machines likewise rely on roll-fed material but produce bowls, trays and hinged packs of the type employed, e.g., to preserve food in transport and on supermarket display shelves.

At ILLIG’s Chinaplas trade fair stand, an RDM 70K with a 680 x 300 mm? forming surface will be shown making APET cups at a rate of close to 45,000 per hour using a 18-cavity mould. APET will also be the material processed by an RDK 80 IC (forming surface: 756 x 565 mm?) in making trays in a 10-cavity mould at 50 cycles/ minute.

The “IC” suffix denotes machines featuring the new “ILLIG Intelligent Control Concept”.

This innovative control system helps the operator to make full use of the high performance capabilities of these servomotordriven thermoforming units, thus attaining a new level in thermoforming excellence.

With the development of its current RDM-K machines, ILLIG has substantially driven

up cup-making productivity while reducing costs and further boosting the quality of the thermoformed articles. On the one hand, the use of servomotors for all machine motions raises the speed of each function, subject to a velocity profile adapted to the given process stage.

On the other hand, these 3rd generation RDM-K automatic thermoformers need less forming air – compared with their predecessor generation, air demand is reduced by up to 50%. This results in a vastly more dynamic forming air build-up.

Technologically, the user will thus benefit from much faster moulding and hence, a much closer reproduction of cavity contours.

In this manner, today’s machines achieve productivity (i.e., cycle rate) gains of as much as 30% and beyond, with a simultaneous increase in moulding quality and substantial energy savings. The high precision and repeatability of these 3rd generation RDM-K automatic pressure forming machines becomes evident already in the start-up phase.

Once the mould has reached its operating temperature, the machine is ready to produce trueto-specification cups.

ILLIG IC – Tapping the machine’s full performance potential The RDK machine’s high productivity of up to 55 cycles/ minute, delivered through consistently servomotor-driven and process-controlled operating sequences, is supported by the new IC (ILLIG Intelligent Control Concept) control technology in today’s machine generation.

This intelligent operating system comprises mutually compatible control modules for a dynamic optimisation of all processes – thus making the machine easier to operate, accelerating start-up of new moulds, eliminating ambient influences through appropriate process control, and boosting process stability and process quality.

One such module is ThermoLineControl, a feature enabling all machine components on the production line to be centrally accessed and programmed at the forming station. The module also provides a diversity of structured help functions for optimizing processes and reducing set-up times.

One newly added capability is referred to as “dynamic process optimization”.

Thanks to this system, the operator no longer needs any expert understanding of interdependences between operating parameters – these are computed automatically for each station on the line. When settings are changed, the cycle rate is re-calculated and adapted immediately.

For enhanced process stability, a compensation control system now adjusts for the effects of changing ambient conditions Continues page 28

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

manufacturing report

The value of Lightweight Assis

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acing increasing operational costs, skills shortages and comparatively low productivity growth, combined with external factors such as increasing competition from lowwage countries, manufacturers are in need of alternative solutions that give them the flexibility and agility to respond to a volatile demand, leading to an increase in productivity in the form of an affordable investment.

Industrial automation currently available is not flexible enough, designed for high volume, low variation processes and hence economically unviable for small and medium sized businesses (99% of industry).

Moreover, current technology is designed to improve productivity by replacing the work force, a strategy that is not considered suitable to the Australian SME sector, as one of their key competitive advantages is the innovation that is generated on the manufacturing line.

Recent advances in robotics and information and communications technologies (ICT) are leading towards the convergence of close collaboration between worker and robot. Advances in sensor technology are also enabling the ability to perceive the dynamic manufacturing environment, with this digital information stream providing a safer work environment with improved quality and productivity outcomes.

Through its research into the Australian SME sector, CSIRO foresees the enhancement (rather than replacement) of manufacturing workers with assistive information technologies and robotics-based technologies as a profound enabler for Australian SME’s economic success.

From a global perspective, the manufacturing sector is the major driver for economic growth in developing countries. The industry has shifted from being predominantly localised with local supply chains and customers, to www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

having globally integrated value chains.

This has been driven by the advantages of lower labour costs as well as by pressures of strong global competition. This has boosted China’s share of global manufacturing activity, as well as the share of other developing economies.

In Australia, the manufacturing industry has grown in absolute terms over the last 25 years, responsible for 1/3 of industry exports. It was also the second biggest contributor of business expenditure on research and

which requires a higher level of adaptability that is difficult for domestic manufacturers to reach, especially SMEs.

Some of these factors are – Uneven number of small firms Australia’s manufacturing industry is made up of a disproportionate number of small firms (86%) many of which operate in small markets.

The sector lost more than 100,000 jobs from 2008 to 2012, and is expected to lose another 85,000 in 5 years.

Skills shortage Especially in the heavy fabrication and engineering industry, being caused by: an ageing workforce, lack of specific skills in new workers, and skilled staff being attracted into the resources sector.

High costs

development (R&D) in 2011.

However, its contribution to nation’s gross domestic product has declined by 4% in the last 12 years, surpassed by the services, mining and construction sectors.

Rising living and energy costs, as well as a weak productivity growth have made Australia a ‘high cost economy’ by international standards, with the appreciation of the Australian Dollar exacerbating the issue.

This decline in the industry’s competitiveness has been attributed to internal factors such as increasing operational costs, as well as global changes,

Despite these challenges, the manufacturing industry is still an important employment source, a vital contributor to the Australian economy with a multiplier effect

ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

manufacturing report

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stive Manufacturing Solutions on other sectors such as mining and services, and the main source of technological innovation across the Australian business sector.

This creates national need to increase the global competitiveness of Australian manufacturing firms to produce high-value offerings in a costeffective way. This, in turn, requires a highly productive, wellskilled workforce equipped with the appropriate tools to revitalise productive performance.

Conventional industrial automation, the current tools available for manufacturers and widely used in the automotive industry, is driven by the need to automate specific mass-manufacturing tasks.

However, new economic drivers are less focused on large-volume production, and more concentrated on the mass personalisation of products.

Conventional automation has proved to be inflexible for manufacturers operating under a low volume, highvariety approach, economically inefficient for small businesses, and unsafe for humans.

This situation dictates a national requirement for affordable assistive automation solutions, that support high variety, low volume production runs, that are easy to implement, highly flexible, and adaptable to operational processes, equipment and human resources already in place.

Lightweight assistive manufacturing solutions In the quest for sources of sustainable competitive advantage, the informationtechnology domain, with a proven ability to increase productivity in manufacturing environments, is emerging as the next technological evolution which will improve the linkages between information technology capabilities, human workers and the physical working

environment, to create smart and flexible factories in the future.

This will provide new levels of production quality, responsiveness, efficiency and labour productivity as well as broader opportunities for products/services that could not be realised with current manufacturing methods.

For these reasons, CSIRO identifies lightweight robotics and advanced ICT-based systems as a viable next generation solutions to achieving these objectives, and the Lightweight Assistive Manufacturing Solutions (LAMS) initiative is the CSIRO proposal for the design, development and demonstration of real-life applicability of these solutions.

Recent advances in robotics and ICT are leading towards the convergence of robotic capabilities directly to human workers and facilitating teamworking between man and robot, as well as augmenting worker’s perception by putting digital information at their hands.

These technologies will impose a whole new era of flexibility and agility to the industry, bringing enormous benefits to the sector and to the nation’s economy.

Lightweight Assistive Manufacturing Solutions will deliver value to the manufacturing small and medium- sized enterprises (SME) in different ways, and will be strongly dependent on the nature of the solution and the form in which is utilised by users.

Worker augmentation systems Provide virtual augmentation to the worker during a production, assembly or quality phase by enhancing their ability to do their job (e.g. Virtual/augmented reality systems, wearable machine vision). Ideal for firms who want to increase productivity

Edgar Brea, Peter Kambouris, Alberto Elfes, Elliot Duff, Marcel Bick, Adrian Bonchis, Ashley Tews and Lydia Lopes. by augmenting workforce capabilities, such as skills, perception, strength and dataprocessing capacity, to make them capable of fabricating high-quality products in a faster and more efficient manner, regardless of their age or physical conditions.

This is also ideal solution to retain experienced elder workers as well as maintaining a skilled labour force capable of dealing with new product fabrication and incorporating changes rapidly and with fewer errors.

Robotic co-workers Robots capable of collaborating with and assisting humans on manufacturing tasks in the form of mobile assistants, semiautonomous manipulators and robot helpers, are intended to be used by firms seeking to introduce a degree of automation to their short-run manufacturing processes. The objective is to increase productivity, but by affording the appropriate degree of agility to responding to demand.

The solution is based on utilising collaborative robots that provide their human partner with machine capabilities but are directly controlled by the human worker itself, creating cooperative teams comprising the strength, speed and precision of robots and the flexibility, creativity and reasoning of humans.

Tele-supervised robotics Automation that extends the reach of the workforce is ideally suited to firms that deal with challenging manufacturing or production conditions as a result of hazardous operational environments or distance/time constraints.

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

manufacturing report Relevance and impact Lightweight Assistive Manufacturing Solutions (LAMS) will directly support Australian manufacturers in addressing international market opportunities and in growing revenues from domestic markets, but are also expected to have wider impact for Australia’s workforce, economy and future manufacturing outlook.

Impact on Australian workforce

solution exploits the benefits a This of the above technologies and

by placing the worker safely away from the operational manufacturing function to now supervise the manufacturing process. This also provides scalability across a number of work cells and across a number of sites. Furthermore, this unique solution provides a new option to increase labour productivity and operational efficiency.

Industry consultations To deliver the value proposed in this initiative, CSIRO recognises the importance of the industry input before, during and after the technology development process.

Initial industry consultation in the form of interviews and workshops including manufacturing firms, peak bodies and governmental representatives has validated some of the initial requirements for Lightweight Assistive Manufacturing Solutions (LAMS) in the following categories: Identify problems faced by Australian manufacturers: Issues associated with increasing product quality, timely response against volatile demand, skills shortage and a decreasing productivity where unanimously reported.

Unavailability of cost-efficient automation systems for lowvolume production and the lack of proper legislation to promote adoption of new technologies were also mentioned. www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

Learn from experience with conventional industrial automation: High barriers of entry, human unsafety and inefficiencies due to focus on small runs of multiple types of products (lowvolume production) were the main negative factors reported during consultations.

Key requirements for LAMS: Safety for humans and affordable costs were among the most reported aspects that a lightweight assistive system must have During the workshop, the need for quality enhancement, downtime reduction and quick return-oninvestment were also highlighted by participants.

The industry consultation process involved individual and/or group conversations with manufacturing professionals, managers, directors and representatives from 26 organisations. Representation spanned the Australian manufacturing ecosystem and comprised of 16 manufacturing firms from Victoria and Queensland, ranging from SME to MNE (Multinational enterprise); 6 industry peak bodies and 4 state and federal government department and agencies.

Each of the organisations involved in the consultation displayed a substantial level of interest in the proposal, and recognised it as an efficient way to connect with industry.

More and better jobs: Lightweight assistive systems will facilitate Humana’s work in factories, resulting in jobs with more highvalue tasks and less repetitive and physically demanding activities such as weight lifting and tool picking. Indirectly, an increase in the manufacturing industry’s productivity and competitiveness will result in firm expansion, which will create more employment for Australians.

Safer workplaces LAMS have been designed to proactively address safety issues in factory floors by allowing operation in hazardous environments and safely execution of physically stressful activities.

Workforce skilling Remote training systems (a sub-category of LAMS) facilitate continuous on-the- job training for workers, and enable absorption of new apprentices into the industry. Additionally, an industrial environment that promotes training and up-skilling while makes use of the latest technologies available will have a motivational impact on skilled recruits to enter the manufacturing workforce.

Impact on Australian manufacturing firms More profitable businesses: Based on the concept of using robotic co-workers so that the human spends more time adding real ‘value’ to the product in a shorter timeframe, will allow to capture more revenues by covering market needs faster and better than others.

ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

manufacturing report

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Access to international markets: Australian firms should indentify a suitable position within globalised supply chains where they can exploit and use their competitive advantages; LAMS intends to allow the creation of core competencies around quality control and assurance, innovative design and product personalisation.

Maximise global competitiveness To remain competitive, Australian manufacturers need to develop niche, high-value-added products/ services that compete on value rather than on cost.

Rapid re-configurability to support product variety, system scalability and solutions which capture market demands in a timely fashion are the key elements of the LAMS proposition.

Impact on Australian economy Industry’s sustainable growth: LAMS has the potential to equip SMEs with fit-for-purpose technology and prepare them for future challenges in a highly dynamic globalised industry; reshoring manufacturing activities back to Australia as it will be cost-efficient to produce certain parts domestically; and bringing cohesion and interconnectedness to the industry through the use of ICT solutions on top of complementary infrastructure such as the National Broadband Network.

Supporting other industries Due to multiplier interrelations with the services and mining sectors, any economic benefit that lightweight assistive systems produce in manufacturing will be propagated in other sectors of the Australian economy.

Competitive position in future robotics industry The LAMS initiative will lay the foundations for Australia to capitalise and capture revenues from an emerging industry in the foreseeable future, through the formation of research and industrial capabilities around assistive and service robotics for industrial settings.

The future The Lightweight Assistive Manufacturing Solutions (LAMS) initiative will contribute to building a national competitive advantage based on high-valueadded product development and design in the SME space that will reiterate Australia’s well-known competency for innovation. From this position, Australian firms will be able to face international competition head on and rapidly address demands from these emerging markets while maintaining a leadership in the domestic marketplace.

They will maintain the leadership position without comprising worker safety, but will afford higher quality processes and maximise workforce productivity to form high-performance workplaces. The Australian SME sector now has an option to secure a beachhead for future growth by capitalising on the evolving global markets.

The emergence of the fibre based, broad band services across the manufacturing sector will complement LAMS and reduce the barrier to entry for the sector as it adapts the next manufacturing phase in which digital representation of physical settings will enable manipulation of every step across the manufacturing value chain, with digital information flowing purposely across the manufacturing supply chain.

It will also support an era in which cloud services will be transferred to production activities, where simulation, modelling, design and fabrication of product and services will be offered on an on-demand basis.

Coupled with the access to new services and manufacturing options, the sector will also develop novel and appropriate business model innovations. The realisation of the full value of this initiative has the potential to redefine customer segments, markets and value propositions.

Distribution channels will be re- engineered and disruptive new ways to create links with customers, and hence new revenue streams, will be defined not only on a national basis, but globally.

Given the underlying technologies and innovative concepts behind the initiative, LAMS represents a step forward in guiding Australia into the future world; a world in which organisations will need for smart solutions that are constantly measuring and calibrating themselves to maximise efficiency; a world that will demand for assistive solutions to enhance an ever-increasing ageing population; an era in which individuals will seek for solutions that makes them virtually accessible and reachable by anyone at anytime; and a society becoming more interested in customised solutions that meets their unique personal demands at low prices, which requires smart interconnected systems always aware of people’s needs.

Australia’s investment in information and co unication technology has been exploited in a number of core economic sectors. It’s time to leverage this investment and reinvigorate the innovation powerhouse of the economy, the manufacturing sector. u www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

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manufacturing report

A giant leap for Polymer Solar Cell (PSC)

R

esearchers from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) demonstrated high-performance polymer solar cells (PSCs) with power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.92% which is the highest values reported to date for plasmonic PSCs using metal nanoparticles (NPs).

introduced at both ITO/PEDOT:PSS (type I) and PEDOT:PSS/active layer (type II) interfaces in polymer: fullerene-based BHJ PSCs due to the silica shells.

Because PSCs have many advantages, including low cost, solution processability, and mechanical flexibility, PSCs can be adopted in various applications.

However, we should break the efficiency barrier of 10% for commercialization of PSCs. Jin Young Kim and Soojin Park, both, Associate Professors of the Interdisciplinary School of Green Energy, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, South Korea, led this work.

A polymer solar cell is a type of thin film solar cells made with polymers that produce electricity from sunlight by the photovoltaic effect. Most current commercial solar cells are made from a highly purified silicon crystal.

The high cost of these silicon solar cells and their complex production process has generated interest in developing alternative photovoltaic technologies.

Compared to silicon-based devices, PSCs are lightweight (which is important for small autonomous sensors), solution processability (potentially disposable), inexpensive to fabricate (sometimes using printed electronics), flexible, and customizable on the molecular level, and they have lower potential for negative environmental impact.

Polymer solar cells have attracted a lot of interest due to these many advantages.

Although these many advantages, PSCs currently suffer from a lack of enough efficiency for large scale applications and stability problems but their promise of www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

extremely cheap production and eventually high efficiency values has led them to be one of the most popular fields in solar cell research.

To maximize PCE, light absorption in the active layer has to be increased using thick bulk heterojunction (BHJ) films.

However, the thickness of the active layer is limited by the low carrier mobilities of BHJ materials.

Therefore, it is necessary to find the ways to minimize the thickness of BHJ films while maximizing the light absorption capability in the active layer.

The research team employed the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect via multi-positional silicacoated silver NPs (Ag@SiO2) to increase light absorption. The silica shell in Ag@SiO2 preserves the SPR effect of the Ag NPs by preventing oxidation of the Ag core under ambient conditions and also eliminates the concern about exciton quenching by avoiding direct contact between Ag cores and the active layer.

The multi-positional property refers to the ability of Ag@SiO2 NPs to be

Prof. Kim said, “This is the first report introducing metal NPs between the hole transport layer and active layer for enhancing device performance.

The multipositional and solutionsprocessable properties of our surface plasmon resonance (SPR) materials offer the possibility to use multiple plasmonic effects by introducing various metal nanoparticles into different spatial location for high-performance optoelectronic device via mass production techniques.”

“Our work is meaningful to develop novel metal nanoparticles and almost reach 10% efficiency by using these materials. If we continuously focus on optimizing this work, commercialisation of PSCs will be a realization but not dream,” added Prof. Park.

This research was supported by WCU (World Class University) program through the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation funded the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Minister Lee Ju-Ho) and the National Research Foundation of Korea (President Seung Jong Lee). It has published in Nano Letters (Title: Multipositional Silica-Coated Silver Nanoparticles for HighPerformance Polymer Solar Cells ). u

business news

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27

Mainland China companies seek investment opportunities in U.S.

HONG KONG:

M

ore than 20 companies from the Chinese mainland province of Guangdong and 10 Hong Kong services providers will come to the United States this June to seek investment and partnership opportunities. The Hong Kong-Guangdong Joint Investment and Partnership Mission to North America will promote Hong Kong business services advantages to U.S. companies looking for Chinese capital for partnership as well as seeking expansion to Asia’s robust markets.

billion US) in 2012, ranked number one among all provinces and municipalities in China. The province has emerged as a major global manufacturing base as well as an important market over the past decades.

Kong’s financing, tax advisory, due diligence, consultancy, and risk mitigations services.

At the TATHK events in New York and Los Angeles, the Guangdong delegates will attend thematic sessions on mainland outbound investment. Each of the main symposiums in each city will also feature major sessions entitled: “Going Out: The Perspective from Chinese Enterprises,” which will provide details on how Hong Kong connects U.S. companies with quality mainland enterprises.

Following that will be tailored business-matching meetings for U.S. companies to connect with Guangdong potential investors/partners and Hong Kong delegates.

The Guangdong-Hong Kong delegation will arrive in New York on June 10, and will attend the “Think Asia, Think Hong Kong” (TATHK) forum in New York on June 11, and then travel to Los Angeles on June 14 for the second leg of the TATHK promotion. The mission is organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) and the Economic and Information Committee of the Guangdong Province (GDEIC).

Hong Kong: China Outward Investment Conduit Hong Kong, a city that is well versed in bringing East and West business interests together and enjoys legal and economic autonomy under the onecountry, two-system framework with China, is now using its international expertise to assist mainland companies in taking their expansion plans abroad.

According to China’s Ministry of Commerce, overseas direct investment from the mainland via Hong Kong amounted to $261.5 billion up to 2011, accounting for 61.6 per cent of China’s total cumulative overseas investment.

According to a 2012 HKTDC study of Chinese companies looking to invest overseas, Hong Kong is highly favoured as an outbound investment partner by mainland companies, due to its rule of law, global trade experience, low-tax regime, and no capital-flow restrictions.

Mainland investment ventures are also well supported by Hong

Guangdong Seeking Technology and New Ideas The Guangdong enterprises on the June U.S. mission are seeking investment opportunities to develop in a variety of new markets and sectors. “The Guangdong delegates will be looking for technology and related opportunities,” said HKTDC Assistant Executive Director Raymond Yip, who added that the delegates would also visit Toronto, Ontario. “They are seeking manufacturing, robotic, solar and green energy-related technologies, as well as partnership opportunities. They are open to many new possibilities.”

Guangdong enterprises are keen to explore what the U.S. can offer, according to the head of an electronic company that will be coming to the U.S. in June. “When we look for innovations and new ideas, we go to the U.S.,” said Liu Yongpeng, Chairman of Zhao Qing Beryl Electronic Co., Ltd. “In order to meet the market demand, we are exploring investment opportunities in new material technologies area this year, especially in the macromolecular material technologies, which is aligning with our future new product development plan.”

With a population of more than 105 million, Guangdong’s GDP reached 5.71 trillion yuan ($913.8

Business-matching Opportunities Abound

Other TATHK sessions will cover technology, lifestyle products, fashion, food and wine, finance, accounting, legal, logistics and marketing. The TATHK campaign is expected to attract more than 2,000 American corporate leaders, government representatives, heads of SME’s and opinion leaders with a special interest in Asia.

About HKTDC A statutory body established in 1966, the HKTDC is the international marketing arm for Hong Kong-based traders, manufacturers and service providers, with more than 40 global offices, including 11 on the Chinese mainland. The HKTDC organises trade fairs and missions to connect companies with Hong Kong and mainland opportunities and provide information via trade publications, research reports and online. Visit: www.hktdc.com u www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

business books

Manufacturing Enterprise in Asia -

Size structure and economic growth

I

ssues relating to the size of manufacturing firms are central to the discussion of development strategies. Globalisation,Labor Markets and Inequality in India offers an interpretation of growth trajectories in the size-structure of enterprises in the manufacturing sector of selected Asian economies.

Presenting a comparative survey of the distribution of enterprises by size across Asia, including India, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Bangladesh and Vietnam, the book helps to identify three distinct patterns of manufacturing sector development, making the connection between enterprise development and its overall impact on the economy.

The book goes on to investigate the problem of the peculiar dual size structure of manufacturing in India, with its two modes at

the low and high end of the size distribution and the conspicuous ‘missing middle’, and the effect that this has on the country’s economy.

This pattern is contrasted with the ‘East Asian’ model with a more even size distribution, and the recent experience of the newly developing countries of Asia where size distribution is skewed to the right. This book provides an important contribution to studies on Asian economics and manufacturing industries.

The Authors:

From page 21

ILLIG at Chinaplas 2013

during the production run. Until now, the inevitable heat-up of the machine frame in the course of thermoforming operations would lead to temperature irregularities (temperature drift) in the material web.

Another new module, called sasup (self-adaptive start-up), provides a start-up mode with a lower cycle rate and process-optimized settings, thus greatly reducing material consumption in the startup phase when a new mould is put into service. The intelligent control (IC) concept is rounded out by its ability to integrate the production line into ILLIG’s NetService – with the benefits of providing an Internet-based review of all line components, fault diagnosis, and fast troubleshooting where problems are due to machine settings. www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

By Dipak Mazundar and Sandip Sarkar

With its IC concept, ILLIG once again drives innovation. Dynamic process optimization as the system’s core element makes it possible for the first time to tap the full technology potential of today’s thermoforming lines – rapidly and with minimum operator effort.

ILLIG is a global leading supplier of high-performance production lines and moulds for thermoforming plastic materials as well as of solutions for the packaging industry.

The company’s product and services portfolio comprises the development, design, fabrication, installation and start-up of complex manufacturing lines and individual components.

With branch establishments and agencies in over 80 countries, ILLIG is locally present in all markets around the globe.u

Dipak Mazumdar, a Senior Research Associate at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada, is the author of numerous publications on development economics.

Sandip Sarkar is currently working as a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Human Development in New Delhi, India. His main areas of research interest are industry, poverty, labour, and employment, on which he has u over two decades of experience.

Asia Manufacturing News Keeping Asia and the World in touch with the Latest Technology and Manufacturing Developments www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

developments

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29

Nanostructures for hostile environments

S

TOKYO:

cientists at Tokyo Tech have developed a new self-assembled nanostructure that can survive very hot or saline environments.

Nanostructures that assemble themselves from polymer molecules could prove to be useful tools in chemistry and industry. However, it is difficult to develop structurally robust selfassembling materials because they are often adversely affected by their surroundings.

Many natural organisms have evolved to protect themselves in hostile environments. For example, types of archaea - singlecell microorganisms living in hot springs - have cyclic molecules in their cell membranes that form shields to preserve the cell under extreme heat.

Inspired by nature’s use of cyclic structures, Takuya Yamamoto and co-workers at the Department of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Tokyo Institute of Technology, have dramatically enhanced both the thermal and salt stability of selfassembling polymeric structures, simply by changing the shape of the founding polymers from linear to cyclic.

The team designed new block copolymers - structures comprising several polymers connected by covalent bonding which self-assembled into shapes called micelles (Fig.1). Micelles have a hydrophilic (waterattracting) outer membrane, and a hydrophobic (water-repelling) core.

“We designed a cyclic amphiphilic block copolymer by mimicking fat molecules in the cell membrane of archaea,” explains Yamamoto. “Both linear

and cyclic copolymers were then used to create identical self-assembling flower-shaped micelles.” The team discovered that although the chemical composition, concentration and dimensions of micelles built from the two differently shaped block copolymers remained the same, the cyclic-based micelles were able to withstand higher temperatures.

remained stable up to far higher temperatures.

“The micelle from cyclic block copolymers withstood temperatures up to 40°C higher than the linear-based micelles,” explains Yamamoto. The researchers found that the tail ends of the linear copolymers were more likely to break loose from the flower-shaped structure during heating, allowing for bridging between micelles to occur. This meant that the micelles join together in an agglomerate blob at a relatively low temperature.

The micelles created by the cyclical copolymers, on the other hand, had no ‘loose ends’ to form bridges, meaning the structures

“The combination of higher salting-out concentrations and thermal resistance means these micelles have numerous potential applications,” explains Yamamoto.

“Possibilities include drug delivery systems, where heating is not possible and salt provides an alternative method for controlling how a micelle responds in order to release a drug.”

The same structural differences allow for a greater tolerance of salt concentrations in the cyclic-based micelles. The loose tails in linearbased micelles allowed rapid dehydration to occur in highly saline environments, whereas the closed cyclic structures are structurally stronger, making them more resilient to salt.

The team also hope that their micelles could provide the basis for many new materials in the field of green chemistry, because their structural robustness is based purely on their shape rather thanu on complex chemical reactions. www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

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the future of manufacturing

Looking to the

G

Preparing for the new in one are the days of IT in the “support” role. Today, overall IT performance is measured not in bits and bytes, but by how it facilitates overall competitiveness and growth.

To stay competitive in any fastchanging environment, according to industry analyst firm Gartner, businesses must now re-imagine the IT organisation to maintain and “amplify” IT’s contribution to enterprise strategies and operations through integrated technologies, processes and information management capabilities.1 IT systems must support innovation and business transformation. To this end, businesses are capitalising on technology to support “digital transformation”.

The onset of IT automation is having a deep-rooted influence on manufacturing and engineering organisations around the world.

IT automation is the linking of disparate systems and software in such a way that they become self-acting or self-regulating.

The first industrial revolution in IT occurred in the late 1990’s with the widespread implementation of ERP systems to manage departmental tasks and workflows. The second revolution is currently taking place within IT’s infrastructure and operations organisations.2 For the remainder of this article I would like to explore the exponential adoption of automation practices in relation to Gartner’s ‘Nexus of Forces’ theory, ‘Big Data’ and the implications for the future development of ERP systems. According to Gartner, the Nexus of Forces is the convergence and mutual reinforcement of social, mobility,

cloud and information patterns that drive new business scenarios.

‘The Nexus’ is the basis of the technology platform of the future and will continue to disrupting outdated business models.3

Social business applications and Web 2.0 technologies: Social is the most accessible of the four Nexus forces. Social business platforms provide an enterprise a “visible” social network in the same manner that consumer social networks like Facebook do.

These social business platforms provide the basic social business framework for collaboration.

Today’s applications force users to figure out how to map isolated pools of information and functions to their tasks and processes. And they force IT professionals to spend too much of their budget to keep up with evolving business models and requirements.

Adding collaborative Web 2.0 technologies, such as enterprise search, presence, and mashups to business applications is increasingly seen as a way to address the challenge of collaboration and evolving business requirements. Yet while many business users are familiar with these technologies through personal use, they remain uncertain about how these new capabilities can support their business strategies.

The value of Web 2.0 technologies

is that they bring capabilities to business users that were not possible previously. These include:

• Enabling users to securely

access structured and unstructured information across the enterprise in a single search

• Enhancing collaboration both internally and with partners, suppliers and customers

• Boosting the usability of business applications

• Improving the ability to

customise and integrate applications and

• Simplifying application

upgrades and maintenance

Web 2.0 technologies can be used to support business strategies by improving efficiency and productivity as well as harnessing knowledge through collaboration. They also reduce IT costs by simplifying integration and improving IT administration and maintenance. Increasingly, software vendors and businesses are bringing Web 2.0 capabilities from the consumer realm to business applications to address end user and IT challenges.

Unlike the consumer realm, businesses must control who sees critical business information.

Therefore software vendors have been infusing these technologies with the security and management features found in traditional software applications.

Web 2.0 makes enterprise information more easily discoverable in a number of ways. It enables users to search for all types of data in a single search; it improves the relevance of results through a Google-

1 The New IT: Drivers, Challenges and Opportunities, Gartner, Inc., January 27, 2012 2 http://www.cio.co.uk/article/3301212/the-next-industrial-revolution-is-coming-to-a-data-centre-near-you/?pn=3 3 http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/nexus-of-forces/ www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

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the future of manufacturing

31

e future of ERP

ndustrial revolution in IT inspired link structure and allows content categorisation to arise organically through tag clouds; it augments returned search results with additional data, as well as updates users about new content automatically through real-simple syndication (RSS).

Enterprise Mobility: Supporting agility and flexibility The Internet and mobility play an essential part in the daily lives of the information-hungry global economy, but how do you make ERP mobile? Furthermore, how do you use mobility to the benefit of those in manufacturing?

The image of the traditional ERP system doesn’t match with today’s powerful mobile devices and flexible, scalable software solutions. The traditional image has become outdated. There is a new set of technologies which enable ERP with ‘Enterprise Mobility’.

Mobility in the workforce has become a competitive necessity rather than simply offering a competitive edge. The vast majority of manufacturers and engineering companies already utilise the benefits of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to optimise and improve organisational processes and cut costs.

Enter enterprise mobility, which is all about flexibility, provides easy access to information and processes to employees wherever they are located. It can encompass everything from the integration of mobile phones into a corporate telephone system to vertically oriented solutions involving the quick delivery of productivity enhancing information to people

in the field, the factory and in the warehouse.

Enterprise Mobility improves employee performance and increases productivity by ensuring employees access to data from your ERP system at all times and in all locations. Inventory tracking is improved by labelling and scanning inventory to achieve optimum traceability and to make immediate adjustments during counting, leading to improved confidence in your enterprise data; you know your stock levels are accurate and can therefore make better business decisions when buying and selling products.

Mobile ERP offers organisations the option for lightweight access and ability to work with information within their ERP system through un-tethered wireless Web browsers, on a variety of common mobile devices like laptops, iPads or smart phones.

With the rapid expansion of mobile devices, you should make sure that your ERP solution can handle deploying information and transactions to these devices seamlessly by using technology that allows ERP applications to run as smart clients or Web clients, or on mobile devices, all from the same source code. This will ensure that customisation and user personalisation remains intact, whatever the user interface.

Leveraging information: Big data and analytics Big Data is the rapid growth and evolution of business data.

Organisations must find a way to collect and make use of the large amount of data gathered. They must overcome the challenge of speed requirements for the capture and increasingly complex analysis

By Craig Charlton, senior vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific, Epicor

of data and install strategy around the many ways to leverage an expanding range of data format.

The challenges associated with leveraging Big Data and fully capitalising on the benefits it can bring is continually pushing manufacturers to keep their ERP strategies up to date and make the most out of their investment.

Manufacturers are using business intelligence and analytical tools embedded in their ERP solutions to take the large volumes of data gathered and held within their system, and make it more easily consumed for fact –based decision-making.

When every employee is provided with a timely source of information and understands the mission-critical objectives, less time is spent gathering data and more time is spent on planning and taking action. Key to this type of active decision making is providing the right kind of information for each business

a

www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

the future of manufacturing

and functional group. The a level necessary information already

their unique needs by creating detailed or summarised indicators that are focused on a particular record such as a customer. A business can see related information by linking multiple components together and publishing based on the selected record.

Advanced components can be generated while adding sheets or additional tabs to existing components.

exists in your business systems.

Use business intelligence tools to unlock it and provide deep business insight, rich decisionmaking capabilities, and improved collaboration among teams.

Two tools that are critical to leveraging information and data analysis and a crucial part of every advanced ERP system are Business Activity Query Reports (BAQ) and Dashboards. Both tools provide an important function in decision making and accessing large amounts of data in an easily consumed format. These tools can be described as follows:

• Dashboards – An application

that allows an organisation to easily publish updateable dashboards of user-specific information. Built directly into all your ERP system, dashboards permit the combination of multiple capabilities such as inquiries, ad hoc reports, workbenches, graphical analyses, tactical business intelligence, alerts and business monitoring—all in a single dashboard.

• Business Activity Query (BAQ)

– A dynamic query engine and graphical orchestration tool, used to create personalised or standard queries that can be used throughout the application to generate reports, quick searches, support portal views, or dashboard views. BAQ reports allow organisations to quickly generate their own indicators. This allows businesses to see the exceptions in their business based on

They provide a robust one-stop interface that replaces traditional menu systems with personalised role or context based views and links into core transactions of the system. In addition, they

put the visual indicators and functions you use the most right at your fingertips. Tooled with unique flexibility, dashboards enable users to develop their own workbenches using a series of online views of information such as a tracker. From a tracker, “open with“ technology is deployed to drill into any part of the system, whether it is to enter a new order, modify an existing one, or update a customer record.

Previous technology revolutions have tended to come from business – top down – but what we are currently experiencing is that a much greater role is being played by users. Some call it the consumerisation of IT, and there is no doubt there is a much greater feeling of empowerment and entitlement amongst today’s users which in turn is changing the way technology is delivered and consumed.

The challenge for traditional IT is that this brave new world renders many existing architectures and strategies obsolete. The best thing to do is to work out a strategy that protects and u enables your business to thrive.

SUCCESS THROUGH INNOVATION

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technology

ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

33

Tanaka obtains accreditation for silver analysis technology

TOKYO:

T

anaka Holdings Co., Ltd. (a company of Tanaka Precious Metals) has announced that the TKG Laboratory Centre of Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo K.K., which operates the Tanaka Precious Metals’ manufacturing business became the first company in Japan to acquire ISO/IEC17025:2005(*1) accreditation for silver analysis technology.

The ISO/IEC17025:2005 accreditation recognises that Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo’s analysis technology is compliant with international standards on repeatability of analytical results concerning the quantitative analysis of 37 elements including 23 significant elements that should be analysed as trace elements in silver and this is the first time this kind of accreditation has been awarded in Japan.

Upon certification, from January 2011, Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo has continued working on the optimization of silver analysis techniques. Through these efforts, the Company sought to correct solubility conditions of silver analysis samples while confirming the validity of the analysis method, and the improvement in accuracy of analysis made it possible to obtain ISO/IEC17025:2005 accreditation.

Spectrometer, a solution in which silver is dissolved with nitric acid and another solution in which indissoluble elements with nitric acid are dissolved using a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid.

and rapid analysis methods a pressing issue. Currently, silver is used in a wide range of products in industrial fields, such as bonding material, contact material, solar cell electrodes and sputtering targets.

However, the problem with this method was that errors may increase when the concentration of impurities is low. Further improvement in analysis technology to define the content of every element was necessary.

In particular, bonding material made of high-purity silver is used in advanced industrial products such as power devices, power LEDs (light emitting diodes) and MEMS (microelectromechanical systems), for which markets are beginning to expand on a large scale. It has been confirmed that the function of such products is affected if they contain even trace amounts of certain elements, and both customer demand and market requirements for silver analysis are increasing.

Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo has worked on the optimisation of silver analysis technology to resolve such issues. Through these approaches, the Company was able to improve the accuracy of silver analysis when there are low concentrations of impurities by investigating the pretreatment conditions and ICP Optical Emission Spectrometer measurement conditions, leading to ISO/IEC17025:2005 accreditation for the entire analysis process including the method of dissolving silver.

Obstacles to silver analysis

ISO/IEC 17025 is an international standard that defines the general requirements concerning the ability to perform testing and calibration, and it requires not only the operation of management systems such as those specified in ISO9001, but also strict analytical ability. This accreditation enables the users of manufacturing various industrial silver products to establish an ever more reliable analysis infrastructure for silver.

To dissolve silver for analysis, nitric acid is used instead of aqua regia, which is generally used for dissolving other precious metals.

This is because dissolving silver in aqua regia produces silver chloride which may hinder the operation for determining the grade of silver. However, if silver which contains goldas a trace element, for instance, is dissolved in nitric acid, gold remains undissolved, thus making the analysis of silver more difficult than other precious metals.

The rise in precious metal prices in recent years has led to silver being extracted not only from mines but also recycled items, making the development and establishment of more accurate

That is why in recent years Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo has been using a method that establishes the purity of silver through the subtraction method by assessing, via an ICP Optical Emission

In this connection, by exchanging opinions with an incorporated administrative agency Japan Mint Bureau the Company was able to extend its knowledge of silver analysis methods.

By obtaining the accreditation, Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo has achieved an important goal in the analysis of precious metals, acquiring ISO/IEC17025:2005 accreditation for analysis technology for gold which has particularly high turnover among precious metals, platinum, palladium and silver. The Company will continue to strive for quality improvement to realize the world standard for analysis technology and quality assurance of these uprecious metals in the future. www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

analysis

Where to tomorrow...?

W

hen Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer¸ he probably didn’t realise he would summarise today’s global financial system in one scene…

Tom, the main character, actually convinces his peers to pay him, and give him things, for the privilege of doing his chores — specifically, whitewashing fences.

And eventually, he’s got everyone doing it.

In the same way, the United States has precariously convinced other countries to “give” it cheap stuff through cheap labour, in exchange for the privilege of holding our dollars. They’re whitewashing U.S. fences, as if they didn’t have their own fences to paint.

That’s why if there’s one single trend that’s weighed heavily on the minds of smart Americans, it’s how the U.S. workforce has shifted away from making things and piled into service sectors riddled with malinvestment.

That’s about to change and a good thing too — as manufacturing is a bedrock of real economic value.

According to the National Association of Manufacturers: “Manufacturing in the United States produces $1.8 trillion of value each year, or 12.2 percent of U.S. GDP. For every $1.00 spent in manufacturing, another $1.48 is added to the economy, the highest multiplier effect of any economic sector.”

The first time I heard about 3-D printing, I thought to myself, “Impossible!” But then I thought, “What if it actually is possible?”

Guess what? It’s possible… and it has the potential to change the www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.com

ways of global manufacturing forever. Forbes says, “3-D printing will change absolutely everything it touches.” Wired proclaims, “3-D printing will be the next industrial revolution, and [it] will compete with mass manufacturing in many areas.”

3-D printing holds the promise of unlimited customization of the kinds of products you want to use and buy. You’ll have greater control, and more of a say in how things are created… how they come into the physical world.

This technology could create many new jobs and careers and strengthen the economy. It will also decrease the cost in time, money and materials it takes to transport your possessions. But at the same time, the resulting technological disruption facing existing industries is likely to shift the balance of wealth around the world.

The last time there was such a shift in the standard of manufacturing may very well have been the early 1900s, when Henry Ford invented mass production for his Model T automobiles.

For roughly 30 years, 3-D printing has been in development under the name “rapid prototyping.” But in the past five years, it has finally gained real traction within the marketplace. Now both inventors

and investors have hit the ground running.

Soon enough, the 3-D printer will be as familiar to you as the personal computer. Catch the idea before the idea catches on and you could put some extra cash in your pocket.

3-D Printing isn’t when a 2-D image is applied onto a 3-D surface. That’s called pad printing. And it’s not printing 2-D holograms. That’s holography.

Think about the 2-D printer in your office, and in just about every office in the developed world. That 2-D printer uses ink from its cartridges and paper from its tray to print something on a flat piece of paper.

First, as always, you start with an idea. Then you use computer software as a tool to develop your idea. When you’re ready to have the real thing, you click “print” and the command travels through a computer network and out from your printer. That’s what you’re used to.

But a 3-D printer is an “evolved” 2-D printer.

You develop your idea on a computer-aided design (CAD).

After you’re finished, it travels through a network and out from a 3-D printer as… an object. An object! A real three-

analysis dimensional object. Not an image on a piece of paper. A design that’s become incarnate!

3-D printers lay down successive layers of micro-thin “ink.”In between each layer, a binding agent may be applied. A fully automated laser eventually fuses everything together. After doing this many times, it builds up from a series of cross sections and becomes a 3-D object.

In other cases, the nozzle of the printer acts like a hot glue gun.

The “ink” is typically a polymer or metal, and it comes in a fine powder or molten liquid form.

The “paper” is actually the object itself, and the applied binding agent helps hold it all together.

Those ingredients are often held in a heated container so they don’t clump.

Eventually, what usually happens is that a fully automated laser fuses together the “ink” and the “paper” until the whole thing solidifies. This means that 3-D printing is a kind of “additive manufacturing” and can create almost any shape with extreme precision.

ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

It’s a revolutionary upgrade and distinctly different from the traditional machining method of “subtractive manufacturing.” That is, when you have to mould, cut, drill or beat something out of a larger chunk of material.

It is, therefore, extremely costeffective. The leftover raw material can be reclaimed and used just as easily for what you print next. It also allows products to be made in a matter of minutes to hours, not days or weeks.

This method is a way to build from the bottom up, from small to big.

And it can build from the inside out. Another great advantage with this technology is that it derives from computer-aided design (CAD). That means there’s virtually no limit to customization.

Luckily for everyone: When industrial-scale technology advances enough, it has a way of finding itself into people’s homes.

Just remember how personal computers got here. Computers used to be the exclusive tool of the military, science labs and a select few universities. Then visionaries like Steve Jobs and Bill

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Gates made a market that enabled the PC to infiltrate your own life.

And just remember, before the personal computer revolution took off, Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp. in 1977 said, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”

You know how that turned out. It’s likely that 3-D printing will follow suit.

Technologies like 3-D printing don’t disrupt industries as soon as they’re discovered and invented.

They disrupt industries when there is a cost-efficient business model that allows them to spread through the greater population.

The Model T Ford, for example, was not the first automobile. Cars were luxury items for the rich.

It was when Henry Ford found a way to make them affordable and mass-produced them that the market was disrupted.

That’s where 3-D printing is now.

It’s becoming more affordable, and it’s going to change the landscape on which your investments sit.

And the rug will be entirely pulled out from under some industries.

But who will lead the way?

u

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ASIA MANUFACTURING NEWS • JUNE 2013

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