Specialized in the production of machines and providing solutions in the fields of spinning, nonwoven, man-made fiber and card clothing, Trützschler with the systems it has developed, enables work processes to become more functional as well as efficient. Mr. Hermann Selker, Head Marketing at Trützschler Spinning and Mr. Recep Eker, General Manager of Truetzschler Tekstil Makinalari Ticaret in Gaziantep, responding to the questions of our Publishing Group at the Facility of Trützschler located in Mönchengladbach, provided information regarding the latest technologies, the current as well as target markets.
Trützschler Group is a successful company having a long-standing background. Can you provide some information regarding the history of your company?
Hermann Selker: Trützschler is successful and next year we will be 130 years old and 70 years here in this city of Mönchengladbach. So, the company was originally founded in the eastern part of Germany 130 years ago and moved to Mönchengladbach after the WW2. And this year, exactly 50 years ago, we were starting building and selling carding machines so we were the last players in the carding selling game. After fifty years of success we are now the market leader in producing carding machines.
Can you mention Trützschler’s technological solutions that provide textile enterprises with high efficiency in terms of flexibility and productivity?
Hermann Selker: There is not only one technological solution we are offering, I´m now talking about Mönchengladbach, and Mönchengladbach means Trützschler Spinning. First of all, the Trützschler Group consists of four companies or four business units: Spinning - the headquarters is here in Mönchengladbach; Card Clothing is in Southern Germany, Nonwovens near Frankfurt and Man-Made Fibers, a small company in Switzerland. I will talk about Trützschler Spinning. Trützschler Spinning, for example, there is a continuous development to improve productivity in all machines for instance carding machines. The Trützschler cards today can handle much more production than ten years ago. We are always the first, this means we set the benchmarks and the others follow or try to follow. If there are new problems in spinning like for example, thirty years ago, more and more foreign parts. It was not possible to eliminate foreign parts out of the raw material cotton automatically, that means to detect all parts that are not cotton and eliminate them. We started with the development and today we have a solution with the highest effectivity in the market. This development was step by step. Now we have five different technologies in one machine, because one technology cannot detect all the foreign particles. For instance, for coloured/dark coloured, for transparent or for semi-transparent materials, for fluorescent materials, for shiny materials, for small/thin foreign particles we have five different technologies, this means 5 different detecting and lighting units like 3-CCD cameras, 4-CCD cameras, UV light, LED light, polarized light… all these combine five technologies. This is a good example of how we develop and how we find new technological solutions.
What strategy has Trützschler set for the developments taking place in Industry 4.0? What advantages does Trützschler's T-DATA system, which is an important initiative in this area, provide to enterprises?
Hermann Selker: Since decades, blow room installations are typical examples for Industry 4.0. Because all the different machines in such a blow room have separate electronic devices that can communicate to each other and can communicate to higher ranking systems. That was multi-discipline of the past, of course, but today all machines have the intelligence to control the machine and to talk to the machine’s downstream and backwards of the installations for example, they can communicate with the central system and give this information and so on. So, the first step is done, all our machines are able to communicate. The second is done, this means we have a high-ranking data system and this data system can collect data from the machines and can use these data for optimization, to find out better settings and so on. For example, in the cleaner, we have the optical sensors WASTECONTROL. This sensors controls the quality of the waste of the cleaners. If there are too many good fibres in the waste, then the machine can change its settings with small servo motors. This kind of self-optimizing, self-learning systems we adapt at different places. For example, comber has a function to find out optimal setting of the piecing period. Or the T-CON system of the cards inform the technicians about possibilities to improve the quality. That is our philosophy that we started decades ago and improved it more and more. I am sure that, at the next show maybe at ITMA, we have more ideas and we are going in this direction. Self-optimizing is the key word for the future. One reason is, of course, to go in the direction towards a fully automatic system. The other is that you will find not so many well trained technologists everywhere. Here in Europe and Turkey we have well-trained people, but we have also other markets where people do not have technological know-how. So we give this technological know-how with our machines, this is an essential part of Industry 4.0.
As of June 2016, İkiler Tekstil Mümessillik ve Ticaret A.Ş. has taken over the position of being the Turkey Representative of Trützschler Spinning. Why did you need this change and what consideration regarding your Turkish activities has been influential in this strategic decision?
Recep Eker: We have a sales department in Turkey since 1997 and since 1998, it is a limited company established under Turkish law. There are 16 current employees and 3 retired employees who are still working, yet on a contract-basis. There are also 5 German staff members. Our task there is to provide consultancy to customers at the pre-sale stage and to form a frame for machinery as well as equipment according to the requirements of the customer. Then we start project designing, after receiving the quotation from Germany; tracking of the quotation, post-call planning, installation, training and thereafter providing consultancy services and servicing under warranty, according to the needs of the customers. Additionally we have a parts warehouse and can sell approximately 90 percent of the spare parts from Turkey.
Trützschler also has a sales and service team in Turkey. How does the presence of an office in Turkey reflect on your activities?
Recep Eker: We provide sales support and the customer does not feel lonely. They won’t be concerned with questions such as; “What will happen to my machine, will my machine stop operating if I do not have spare parts?” This is very important because the part sold in the warehouse can be delivered to the customer within 24 hours. It takes at least a week when ordered from Germany. Loading from here, customs clearance etc. they all take time and the machine stops. That's why we can offer parts directly from depot to customers.
How would you evaluate the first quarter of 2017 in terms of your targets with respect to the Turkish market? What sales figures do you aim to achieve by the end of 2017?
Hermann Selker: For theTurkish and the world market we expect results comparable to 2015-2016 on good level. Especially two markets are very active: Vietnam and Bangladesh. The Turkish market in the first quarter was, relatively weak. I think the reason was the political trouble in your country. When our customers have worries about the future and feel insecure, they start questioning whether they should invest. But from my observations at KTM 2017 Exhibition, which was held in Kahramanmaraş, I believe that they are now more optimistic about the future. So we expect the second half of this year to be more positive than the first half.
Recep Eker: The year by total will not be so good for Turkey but we hope that the second half of the year will be better.
What are your goals for the global markets in 2017 and 2018? Could you mention about the markets that you have a strong presence in and your goals set for those markets?
Hermann Selker: This year is coming to an end. And we have a satisfying order backlog. We do not exactly know about next year but there is no reason for this to change, because we are worldwide in the global business. Staple fibre consumption is growing about 3 % every year since twenty, thirty years. This means that more and more people living on our planet and the per capita consumption is growing too, mainly in China and India. So, markets like India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Vietnam are doing very well.
So, can we say that these are the markets that Trützschler has a strong presence in?
Hermann Selker: We have in China and India own production units. This means machines for India are produced in India while machines for China are produced in China. So, for example, our largest production plant is today in India with more than 950 employees. In China the size is like Mönchengladbach. These two countries, I mean China and India together, covers nearly two-thirds of the world market for us. This means more than 60% of all fibres are spun in this markets. One third is the rest of the world including Turkey, Southeast Asia, South America and North America. So, we produce here in Germany the machines for this part of the world. This means for Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand and South and North America.
