Capital Equipment News May 2022

MANUFACTURING

Kwatani screens, gearboxes and motors on the assembly shop floor.

was able to remanufacture a large vibrating screen in just two weeks. Given the current shipping challenges and the criticality of the screen to the client’s plant, the machine was flown to the customer to avoid shipping delays. Sandvik synergies With continued growth of its export business, Kwatani will further leverage Sandvik’s global reach to better service its customers. The recent acquisition by Sandvik, says Schoepflin, provides Kwatani with greater access to foreign markets through Sandvik’s extensive distribution footprint. She adds that an added benefit for customers is the support they will receive through the well-established Sandvik service network of engineers and technicians in the field. The proven interface between Kwatani and Sandvik equipment – for instance, a Kwatani screen feeding into a Sandvik crusher – will add considerable value to customer’s purchasing choices. “The Kwatani product fits nicely into Sandvik’s broad portfolio. Our customised vibrating screens are complementary to the Sandvik product. We therefore see a lot of synergies between the two companies, with little overlap,” she says. “Sandvik is a technology driven company with a strong digitalisation drive, which complements our own digitalisation drive. As a leader in Fourth Industrial Revolution technology, Sandvik brings state-of-the-art resources to the benefit of Kwatani customers. This includes access to monitoring processes as well as an

pandemic struck, mining companies are revving their procurement engines once again, leveraging the current good run in commodity prices. Consequently, Kwatani has seen a sturdy growth trajectory, with bundling orders as mines seek to increase production to meet the rising global demand for commodities. “We are seeing an uptick of both brownfields and maintenance projects in South Africa and Africa at large,” says Schoepflin. simultaneously limit the impact of supply chain shortages, Kwatani has implemented a production shift system to increase capacity in the factory. In addition, the company has boosted its inventory levels for the few imported items to ensure continued and uninterrupted supplies and mitigate supply chain issues. “In terms of production in the factory, we are comfortably doing around 200 tonnes (t) of fabricated steel a month. Whenever there is need to fabricate more than that, we outsource the fabrication of non-intellectual property (IP) items to selected local fabricators that we have good relationships with,” explains Kenny Mayhew-Ridgers, chief operating officer at Kwatani. As a customised equipment manufacturer, Kwatani benefits from its flexible production processes to get the better of unpredictable demand patterns. “Customised manufacturing means that every job is different. The flexibility of our production Meeting rising demand To meet the rising demand, and

line allows us to fit in a single machine emergency job with ease, while executing an order of 50 machines at the same time. Unlike the batch process, the job-based system gives us the flexibility we need to meet unpredictable demand patterns,” says Schoepflin. Kwatani’s highly skilled workforce, adds Schoepflin, has also been key to success, allowing the company to work around some of the current challenges, including the global supply chain issues and the incessant power blackouts in South Africa. “Planning is key in today’s manufacturing environment. We work on a short-, medium- and long-term planning basis, which gives us the flexibility to respond to issues as they arise. These challenges we face now (global supply chain issues and load shedding), are not going away any time soon and we should therefore be able to work around them,” says Schoepflin. “To be able to do that, you need to have the correct skills in your system. Skills are more important than ever in the manufacturing sector. Our staff’s innovative approach has been a major recipe for success in these difficult operating conditions,” she adds. Consequently, Kwatani has been able to stick to its normal lead times. Leveraging its skilled fabrication staff base, certified to American Welding standards, the company is able to ‘design around problems’, especially for critical equipment, to minimise customer downtime. In a recent machine revamp project for a customer in West Africa, the company

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