Itema, targeting to present more effective production process for its customers with innovative technologies at weaving machine field, is keeping on its activities to renew its product range. Christian Straubhaar, Sales & Marketing Director of Itema Group, who gave special information for our publication group about the innovations at weaving field d the latest products they launched especially to Turkish market, said Turkish market has a key importance for Itema.
Which innovations are presented at your booth to the interest of turkish textile industry as Itema?
We exhibited 4 machines in the İstanbul, including an absolute world premiere, the Itema R95002denim, the second generation of the Itema rapier denim weaving machine. The R95002denim was the real star of the show gathering impressive interest from Customers, weaving experts and visitors. In fact, the R95002denim represents a breaking point with the past in denim weaving by featuring innovative and never-seen in the industry advancements. When developing the R95002denim Itema focused on designing a weaving machine able to guarantee to weavers to save money, produce superior quality fabrics and achieve the highest weaving efficiency. Among all the breakthough innovations implemented on the machine, it’s worth to mention the iSAVER™ by ItemaLab™ which represents the first real innovation in the weaving industry since many years. ItemaLab™, the Itema Advanced Innovation Department, combined the latest and most advanced mechatronic principles to create a revolutionary device able to completely elimate the left-side waste selvegde thus leading to a miminum saving of 2.000€ per year per machine to weaving mills. Signifcantly reducing raw material waste, the iSAVER™ – so far available up to 4 weft colors and exclusively meant for denim applications – ensures never-seen-before cost savings and sets a new benchmark in sustainable weaving.
Airjet or rapier technology is more preferred overwhelmingly within the turkish market? Which product features could have an impact on consumer preferences since you provide important advantages with both machines?
Turkey is traditionally a rapier market. Due to the high quality level of fabrics produced in the country, including complex pattern designs and delicate, fancy weft yarns, rapier is the weaving technology that better meets weavers’ needs. In recent years, airjet weaving machines started to be installed in Turkish weaving mills, especially for mass production fabrics such as apparel, bed sheeting and light denim fabrics. As Itema, we have many Customers who decided to mix both rapier and airjet Itema weaving machines in their plants to producing the widest rage of fabrics and to guaranteeing the shortest orders lead time to their customers. Rapier remains the preferred technology for furnishing weavers due to the possibility to process the widest range of weft yarns, including chenille, lurex and monofilament yarns.
What are the strongest features of Itema in the field of weaving technologies?
What sets Itema apart in the weaving industry is the continuous investments that we do to innovate our weaving machines. We tirelessly work to develop advanced weaving solutions to ensure our Customers to gain a competitive advantage in their market and to make weavers’ life easier and more efficient. Furthermore, we provide a real-time after-sales service to support our Customers in every stage of the weaving process.
What is the importance of Industry 4.0 developments for you?
Itema’s approach to tackling the 4.0 world of possibilities and applying it to our everyday’s production is to start from the bottom-up from each department, based on an in-depth analysis of the working conditions of the main player in each process: the human being.
The real requirements behind process optimization of quality, safety, efficiency are the key drivers of the investment decisions taken by management and of the enabling technologies chosen for the Company. The overarching vision of a Smart Factory fully embraces our corporate lean thinking, ingrained in every activity and in our way of working. The main focus of everything we do is on the final customer and where each single improvement action is carried out with the objective of identifying and eliminating any and all inefficiencies or non-value added activities out from the transformation flow of the underlying production process.
The implementation of a mixed-model assembly line across all our production and assembly facilities worldwide required in itself the development of an adequate and robust IT system in order to manage the high variability of activities and operations required at the
various workstations along each assembly line. The workstations which encountered the highest variability in the types of activities performed by assembly line operators were equipped with latest-generation of smart tablets to enable the workers to access in real-time the exact documentation related to the assembly operations due to be performed at that station at that particular time. The above is just a single specific example of solution studied and implemented by Itema in the context of our steady transition to Smart Factory, which also touch on other area of our production activities such as Building Automation, AGV assembly lines, “Just in Sequence” supply system, “Equipment Automation” and others yet.
What is the position of Turkish market for Itema?
Turkey is a key market for Itema, every year on the podium of the best performing countries for the sale of our weaving machines. We are very proud to be chosen as supplier of best-in-class weaving machines by worldwide renowned Turkish weavers who demonstate that product quality and accurate customer service can still make the difference when competing with other textile markets.
How could you evaluate sales records globally reached by Itema within the first half of the year? What are your planned sales targets by the end of 2018?
2018 started on the right foot for the weaving machinery industry. In fact, as Itema we registered +14% in the sales of our looms compared to the same period of previous year. We know that we have to face an instable market, due to the fragile political and economic equilibrium of many of the countries in which we operate, but we are confident that 2018 will continue on the same positive path.
