Renewal, upgrading, performance. Three words that set the scene for the “Revamping kits and digital solutions for quality improvement and energy savings” conference, organised by Sacmi Istanbul and held in the city of Izmir on 19th July at the Grand Izmir Ozdilek Hotel. This event aimed to bring customers up to speed on the subject of process revamping and digitalization, factors crucial to enhancing quality and optimising energy resources.
The event attracted a top-grade audience, with well over 100 people attending: a clear indicator of local manufacturers' attentiveness to issues such as production process optimisation and energy savings, the hallmarks of the Sacmi ceramic manufacturing solutions range.
Numerous speakers – technicians, managers and area managers – were brought together by Sacmi to give an overview of the key challenge faced by the tiles, sanitaryware and tableware industries every day: the need for plant modernisation, which must always ensure demonstrably higher quality and better efficiency in the short-medium term. Following an introduction by the General Manager of the Sacmi Group, Claudio Marani and the General Manager of SacmiIstanbul, Stefano Donzelli, Benedetto Spinelli of Sacmi Imola (Tiles BU) continued with an illustration of the day's programme.
The first talk, by Daniele Baldini of Sacmi Forni (the Group company that designs and manufactures the tile driers and kilns with the best energy performance on the market), provided an overview of Sacmi-developed energy saving solutions; the concluding talk was given by Giovanni Marnati, quality improvement expert.
A key part of the conference focused on Industry 4.0, the 'process digitalization' that builds true smart factories: more compact, flexible, efficient and competitive plants that respond more effectively to customers' requirements. This aspect was covered by Massimiliano Baruzzi (Sacmi Imola HMI and MES Automation Systems R&D). He explained how solutions such as the advanced Sacmi H.E.R.E. supervisor feature not only monitoring and predictive diagnostic functions but also integrated smart systems that interface directly with the customer's ERP to establish a new order management, logistics and stock logic.
The firing department is crucial to any company modernisation plan. So the second part of the conference had a dual focus: on the one hand, the intersection between modern market requirements and modern revamping plans in the sanitaryware and tableware sectors (illustrated by Thomas Batzel of Riedhammer, Tableware BU) and, on the other, technical ceramics, another strategic sector where Sacmi-Riedhammer combines efficiency and performance with consumption-containing, environmentally friendly solutions (illustrated by Gerhard Nievelle, Technical Ceramics).
The audience livened up the last part of the meeting with numerous questions / requests, highlighting just how topical the subject matter is on the modern local manufacturing scene.