Letter from Ukraine
An update from DJ Maughfling of Supersprox at Zhitomir, west of Kyiv in Ukraine
Production upgrades essential to meet the pressures
As the market tries to adjust to the new realities of supply chain challenges and materials inflation, Supersprox CEO DJ Maughfling is another aftermarket vendor who contacted IDN recently with information about changes made in its production processes this year.
According to DJ, the start of the war in Ukraine has caused the company to review how production will be managed in the future.
DJ says: "This year has been historical in the number of complexities for all businesses around the world. Supersprox will need to adapt to the new conditions in future. We see the slowdown in many economies and the change in the global feeling of wellbeing.
"Now is a time to adapt to the picture that we imagine in 2023-2026. We have a head start on change, because our Ukraine factory is at the so-called front line of Europe, and we lost staff to the war effort. We had to find ways to adapt.
"We have already introduced our first robot into the Ukraine factory during August 2022. Whilst it might seem reckless to invest in a country at war, we consider our strategy to have good logic.
"It seems that the chances of the conflict spreading West is low. However, we also believe that the war will continue for some time, and even if the war was to finish, there will be a long recovery period for Western confidence.
"Historically, one of our main assets has always been our people - but that human resource here will be at a premium in the foreseeable future. Labour shortages are being felt worldwide, but it is becoming especially difficult here, and will be especially acute in manufacturing. Young people don't want to do this kind of work any longer.
"In our steel production, a robot has now taken over the turning process and will be a proof of concepts, because Supersprox has a wide range of differing parts with relatively low volumes. There are many tooling changes required, and that's tough to automate, so we have hired specialists for this new concept. Completely changing the process steps for production has resulted in output increasing more than 60% compared to our historical method of loading the machines.
"Supersprox plans to keep all staff at its Ukraine and Poland factories, and there is a strong expansion plan for the company over the next five years. Several operations will be robotised and from the six key stages of production, four will be fully automated.
"We have already automated the production of aluminium sprockets in Poland during 2022. Now the four different types of machining processes required to make an aluminium sprocket have been replaced by a single process, doing everything.
"A single piece of aluminium goes into the workstation and a finished sprocket comes out - faster and of higher quality. Critically, there doesn't need to be any human interaction during the process. I am sure that many companies will adapt in similar ways to meet the changing demand from their clients. This will be the only way that the market will be able to achieve improved price stability and faster response times."
