Packaging
Customer orientation begins in the development department. The new neo X.
Tuesday 27. May 2008 - Customer-oriented technology and industry-specific value added - this was how the mechanical engineering company Hugo Beck made it to the top. Today, the specialist packaging and finishing company of Dettingen near Stuttgart is one of the leading manufacturers of plant and equipment worldwide with 150 employees and representations around the world.
The new machine generation neo X was first presented to the public at the Interpack 2008. Its history of origins shows that at the Hugo Beck company, customer orientation does not start at sales but right in the development department.
“With the neo X machine generation, we have reached a new level of technology in mechanical engineering for film-wrap packaging machines,” says Ulrich Dilger, Development Manager at Hugo Beck, with conviction. It was not an easy job for developers and design engineers: the new machine generation was developed with the market in mind and therefore is based on in-depth customer surveys. Based on detailed questionnaire comprising several pages that was sent to many customers in Germany and abroad, they made up a list of points of criticism, improvement requests and suggestions of the operators. Three main topics were apparent: the customers requested better ergonomics, simpler maintenance and adjustment options while the machine is running. The engineers at Hugo Beck were faced with the task of meeting those customer requests – and they fully succeeded with the neo X.
But customer orientation is a tradition at Hugo Beck: about 60% of all automated packaging systems built there are custom-designed solutions. In order to check the costs in specialised machine manufacture, Hugo Beck focuses on modular and standardised assembly groups on the one hand, while reducing production and assembly costs by introducing continuous flow production on the other. The machines are exclusively built in-house. “If we want to play a leading role in the market we have to manufacture ourselves in order to give the customer the confidence that the purchased technology works 100 percent,” said Managing Director Horst Heimann. Since even the control systems are produced in-house as complete functional-group controls and then inserted with plug and play, the customer also gets tested modules that are easily exchangeable as well.
Heimann sees reliability and the willingness to meet customer demands as one of the main reasons for the strong growth in recent years. Whether its creating software and programming in-house including remote maintenance via modem or flexible production with a state-of-the-art machinery pool, IT-based warehousing or international after-sales service for components sales – the company offers customers many advantages with its cooperation. “We consider ourselves as premium segment solution providers for the packaging problems of our customers and as providers of high-end film-wrap packaging machines,” Heimann defined the claim of Hugo Beck. It is not enough anymore to just realise a coherent protection for the packaged product. What is needed are clever, customer-oriented solutions like the Hugo Beck film-wrap packaging machine for the wood industry. In this machine, the travelling transverse welding unit ensures a continuous work process, the servo-controlled individual drive governs all motion sequences and the interconnection with an intelligent CNC control system is the focal point of the mechanical engineering. The packaging lines automatically adjust to the given production output and are able to automatically set up the spacing required for sealing.
The entire Hugo Beck Team is convinced that with neo X, they have created a future technology that will add a great deal of process quality.