Page 29 - Glass Machinery Plants & Accessories no. 6/2017

GMP&A: Speaking about should motivate the young people installed there, the next step
smart factories and operators, of this digital era to work there. could be to clean up the work-
how has the number of human Heye for example, has a big ing environment, continue with
operators been reduced in these touchscreen where all the people safety aspects of course, and data
past years? can see the production that is interface and management, sen-
Langer: The target of all plant running and see what’s going on. sors and analyses.
managers is to reduce operating This means that they can also The new Heye machines are
costs. And one of these costs analyse each and every step of the true future-orientated forming
is for manpower and working production process. machines, and we are now work-
hours. However, to reduce these All these pieces of the ‘puz- ing on the optimization of pro-
costs you need to set up a basis. zle’ combine to attract people to cess control and on different sen-
Another aspect is that manpower work in a glass plant. sor systems for the hot end, and
costs differ quite a lot from one Glassmakers also need to of course the swabbing robot.
country and customer to another, inform that working in a glass- With regards to the cold end,
depending on the history and the works also involves a high level of we have the SmartLine with a
know-how of each customer. technology and expertise and the very robust and reliable Starwheel
We support the plant man- need to reach production optimi- inspection machine, and we are
agers with our solutions to be zation, so not only working on working to redesign this inspec-
able to reduce working hours the factory floor but also in the tion machine and will ensure the
concerning swabbing or main- office and labs, as well as man- quality standards in countries
tenance, or by having technical agement – lean management. where they have inspection car-
issues displayed on a monitor, ried out by manual workers.
thus avoiding the time required GMP&A: What can you tell us Heye does not only provide
to check and look manually for about new product development? machines but also performance
these problems. Langer: We are investing a large optimisation (TAA - technical
On the other hand, we also part of our capacity in product assistance agreements) for com-
know – and we have received development regarding both the plete glass lines and factories.
information from a number of hot-end and cold-end. For the Thanks to our local presence
customers all over the world – hot end, the SpeedLine is our we can work side by side with our
that it is becoming more and most important step. This devel- customers, learning about their
more difficult to find experiences opment is a result of many cus- needs, and providing them with
people to work with glass. This tomer projects and discussions the complete services that they
means that right now we can- with long-term customers, also need to use the machinery and
not just reduce the number of considering the possible future plants to their best advantage. O
people working in a glassworks, demands of the glass industry.
but we have to keep and ‘protect’
the experienced workers already GMP&A: What could be the future
there. demands of the glass industry and
So our job is also to find new what could be the next steps?
people who want to work in Langer: I think that if we
glassworks; we need to motivate consider a glass machine and HEYE INTERNATIONAL
them and show them that the the high number of machines GmbH
working environment right now
is completely different from in Heye Sales and Marketing Lohplatz 1, 31683 Obernkirchen - Germany
Tel.: +49 - 5724 - 260
the past. This is the big challenge Management Team Fax: +49 - 5724 - 26539
for plant managers – having the E-mail: marketing@heye-international.com
right machinery, protecting the www.heye-international.com
(work) environment, making it
safe and almost nice to work in.

Mark Ziegler: And this is
what the bigger companies are
doing – showing that it’s safe
to work there now, there are
new machines and technology to
make the work easier, and this