Fongei Industry Adopts Imported Laser-cutter to Sharpen Services

Maker also pays price for excessiv

Taiwan's largest manufacturer of wide-ranging metal chip conveyor, Fongei Industry Co., Ltd. was founded by C.H. Cheng in Taiping City, Taichung County, central Taiwan in 1975. The ISO9001 and CE-mark certified firm has built integrated production to focus on high-end chip conveyor by employing large German-made laser cutters and others. Installing such high-precision production equipment has helped Fongei to offer products to machinery makers as well as other industrial operators.

Initially Fongei specialized in machining parts for Taiwan's machinery makers. Fate somehow diverted the maker's development: responding to demand from a leading domestic maker of automated machine tools 25 years ago, Fongei began developing and producing chip conveyor, the start of its path to build a name in the machine-tool arena both at home and abroad.

Part of Fongei's success is attributable to its business motto of advising buyers to upgrade production efficiency by choosing appropriate equipment such as chip conveyor that are especially designed to meet requirements of the metal-cutting industry.

Wide-Ranging Line

Fongei's chip conveyor generally are categorized into steel-belt and scraper types, which are suitable for CNC lathes, machining centers, milling machines, presses, screw-making machines, and dedicated machine tools. The major product lines include steel-belt chip conveyor, scraper-type chip conveyor (standard, precision, magnetic, and precision magnetic models), roller-type micro-chip conveyor (internal, external models), dual-belt-type chip conveyor, and magnetic conveyor. These conveyor effectively transport metal chips of any configuration, including powders.

Making product selection virtually foolproof, Fongei has even drawn a graphic flowchart to show buyers which chip conveyor would work better along production lines to effectively raise output. With chip conveyor made as dedicated machinery, Fongei's lines can easily handle chips of various configurations and metals, including ferrous, aluminum and brass, as well as non-metallic chips.

FCF-2050 Series

Fongei says its FCF-2050-series magnetic conveyor effectively picks up ferrous chips, silicon-steel chips, and fasteners. Simple and yet effective, the FCF-2050 magnetizes chips, pick them up and then transports as necessary to designed destinations, even allowing set-up coupled with other machine tools to upgrade efficiency of disposal of chips.

Steel-belt Model

The FCA-2050 steel-belt chip conveyor (standard model) is designed to effectively transport chips left by typical machine tools as CNC lathes, machining centers, drills, planer-type milling machines and dedicated machine tools. The “dimpled” steel belt design ingeniously minimizes adhesion of chips to enhance transport and disposal, with the steel belt made of especially durable material for minimized maintenance cost.

Ricky Cheng, the assistant manager, notes that the steel-belt models are mostly employed by machinery makers, with the magnetic conveyor typically demanded by manufacturers of industrial products, such as fasteners, which output ferrous chips. Fongei takes pride in making conveyor according to custom specs, making each suitable for particular applications as well as buyers from all kinds of industries.

Integrating Production

To upgrade production efficiency, Fongei in December 2006 moved major production lines to a new site which integrates manufacturing, business management, and design departments, with the original retaining pressing lines to facilitate the all-in-one production requirements of the new plant.

Setting up the new production facility has resulted in upgrading Fongei's production integration in-house. Over the past two years, the company has invested 500,000 euros to install a large laser-cutter and bender made by German-based TRUMPF, as well as eight robotic systems made by Japan's OTC. The laser-cutter can work over an area of 4x2 M and the bender can handle six-meter-square metal sheets.

Installing such advanced equipment has multi-advantages: not only meeting in-house demands but also being able to be subcontracted to outside manufacturers of various kinds. Cheng claims that the laser-cutter employed by Fongei is the largest of its kind in the entire Taiping City, showing the maker's determination to focus on high-precision production.

Building the new production line also has an added advantage of reducing reliance on imports: now Fongei boasts a 70% local-content rate, meaning the maker can turn out some 70% needed parts independently, with any part on a chip conveyor being able to be made in-house, except for motors, wheels and paint-spraying.

Besides integrating production, Fongei has also computerized operations to enhance customer service. Now the maker can easily track the particular model bought by any customer, as well as offer instructions to enable faster learning of proper operations.

80% Local Share

Fongei offers assorted chip conveyor that has helped the maker to secure an 80% market share in Taiwan, with the remainder exported to some 200 clients worldwide.

Besides being well-known in Taiwan, Fongei has also built a solid reputation in many other markets, especially the Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Japan, the U.S., Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Iran. “We pioneered making chip conveyor in Taiwan and still leads as the biggest in terms of production capacity,” says Cheng.

Cheng estimates that Taiwan has a monthly demand for 2,500 units of chip conveyor, with some 1,800 Taiwan-made models delivered. The new plant allows Fongei to turn out 1,200 chip conveyor monthly with a 10% year-on-year growth in annual sales; however the maker's monthly output has slipped to only 400 due to the global recession.

Retrenchment

Reducing cost to cope with the global downturn is also a strategy Fongei adopts: the maker has in the last year halved the number of employees to the current 85 from last year's 156. Reality truly bites in this business: “We can't escape the ups and downs of Taiwan's machinery industry, which has been battered by the global meltdown with sales down over 60% year-on-year in the first half this year,” laments Cheng. “Most manufacturers of machinery in Taiwan have suffered the same fate and have had to cut back, with our operations bearing the brunt of such retrenchment, the price we pay for relying so heavily on the domestic machinery industry.”

After doing its best to reduce overhead costs over the past few months, Fongei says it has weathered the global recession, but concedes that the road ahead remains rigorous as significant recovery won't come until the third quarter of 2010.

Expand Market Share

Another strategy adopted to ride out the recession has been to aggressively expand foreign market share: For instance, Fongei has just received a sizable order from a maker of automotive parts in Vietnam. Even better news is that Fongei says the order will total 20 to 30 chip conveyor as the Vietnamese maker is building a new factory. To sharpen targeted service, Fongei plans to send in early December technicians to the automotive parts maker to better understand its real needs. Such on-site visit will enable Fongei to brainstorm to meet exact needs so the Vietnamese customer won't be buying a chip conveyor that further burdens manpower cost, instead will invest in a unit that truly upgrades automation as well as reduce hassle of labor management.

FONGEI INDUSTRY CO., LTD.

No. 282, Yongyi Rd., Taiping, Taichung Hsien 411, Taiwan

Tel:+886-4-2270-3088

Fax:+886-4-2277-1227

http://www.fongei.com

E-mail:fonge@ms10.hinet.net