The tough economic climate has pushed Chinese carmakers to find ways to equip themselves -- in terms of quality and price. And therefore, at this moment, flexible production line has become the common focus of carmakers. With high productivity and also excellent quality, the flexible production lines have become popular among Chinese auto industry and have created a business opportunity for machine tool manufacturers. As a leading machine tool manufacturer, how would Little Giant Machine Tool Co Ltd react to the market? Huang Jianwen, chief engineer of the company, told Annie Yang, reporter of Chinamac Journal, about the company's strategy and his opinion.

Adsale: Adsale Chinamac Journal

Huang: Huang Jianwen

Adsale: What do you think about applying high performance machine tools in China's automotive manufacturing?

Huang: As the auto market in China is expanding, overseas carmakers not only have brought new products here but also have installed more advanced auto part production in their Chinese facilities. To complete with these overseas carmakers, many domestic manufacturers have started using advanced production lines for auto parts manufacturing, making flexible production lines comprised by high performance machine tools widely used in the industry. Also, due to surging labor cost, as well as higher demand of good quality and production efficiency from customers, the speed, precision, complexity, automation and energy-efficiency of machine tools being used in the flexible production lines have seen improved.

Huang Jianwen, chief engineer of Little Giant Machine Tool Co Ltd

Adsale: Are there any changes among the market of flexible production lines amid the worsening economic climate?

Huang: Since the costs of imported flexible production lines are too high for carmakers to maintain competitive car prices, many users would switch their preferences to domestic flexible production lines during this economic recession period. In addition, auto parts manufactures not only demand high performance CNC machine tools, they also expect machine tool makers to provide them with complete solutions. This would become a tough question for some machine tool manufacturers.

Adsale: How would Little Giant deal with this demand?

Huang: We not only continuously introduce MAZAK high performance CNC machine tools, but also have established special departments to provide complete solutions to customers. For instance, we have set up a technical department to serve customers of complete solutions. A new department for clamping apparatus has also been formed to support this service and to shorten the delivery time. We also provide various solution plans with lowest costs to our customers.

Adsale: What advantages can flexible production bring to auto manufacturing? Please explain with your products as an example.

Huang: Mass production brought by flexible production is the only way out for lower production cost in auto part manufacturing. To speed up the production, one must fully utilize machine tools and shorten time on cutting and part assembling. To shorten production time and to enhance efficiency, we have developed two-table vertical machining centers which allows one table to work simultaneously while the other is assembling parts. The spindle can keep working to minimize production time. Also, the machine tool equipped with MAZAK's digital system can shorten time spending on arrangement, preparation of cutting tools, lifetime management of cutting tools, tests and maintenance. This product is widely used among the industry.