Posts Tagged 'ceramicx'

All points East and West

February 10, 2012 by Cathal Wilson

Small companies such as ourselves who supply to a full variety of global markets have to develop a strong mindset that can cope with being in several places at once.

I haven’t yet run to having the international time zone clock on my desk – but right now it doesn’t seem like a bad idea. East is meeting West more and more frequently in international business these days – particularly as China’s performance and ambitions continue to rise.

For example, no sooner have we finished the preparation and issues relating to our first Ceramicx exhibition stand at Chinaplas, Shanghai (the show begins in late April 2012) than I’m thinking about marketing needs for the USA National Plastics Exposition starting in Orlando Florida three weeks earlier.

At the same the Ceramicx factory floor is seeing the first fruits and benefits from our Innovation Partnership manufacturing research work – conducted with the University of Limerick team.

It’s all good. In fact the cross fertilisation of various markets and marketing needs helps us at Ceramicx to realise the common platform for infrared heating needs worldwide. We get to identify the strongest common denominators in our products and the marketing of the Ceramicx brand. We enhance these elements accordingly and we also get to make the IR heating benefits and applications even clearer.

And our next edition of our HeatWorks magazine will therefore outline and celebrate these issues and markets in a special East/West edition which Ceramicx will publish next month, ahead of these important shows.

In the meantime, what time is it in Beijing?……

Posted in ceramicx, infrared heaters, Infrared Heating, Innovation Partnership, Innovation Partnership Project, IR development | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Opening up Fundamentals

November 29, 2011 by Cathal Wilson

Here at Ceramicx we are again looking to publishing our fifth issue of HeatWorks magazine. The enthusiasm for the publication – inside and outside the company remains as keen as ever and will be reflected in the dozen or so articles being lined up for the new contents.

Key among the forthcoming pieces is a contribution written by Dr Tony Robinson, based at Trinity College, Dublin.

Tony’s article will pick up the baton in relation to the fundamentals of infrared heating technology. We always aim to enhance the commercial and technical pieces in the magazine with some more general and educational material on the vast and untapped potential within IR heating.

Our last issue of HeatWorks, for example, included an article that described and discussed the beneficial effects of IR heating on the human body.

In our next issue, Tony will look at the fundamental science and behaviour of IR heating in 3D space. His department at Trinity is doing great measurement and prediction work in that area. It is my hope that this research at Trinity will have profound implications for the way we think and plan our comfort and heating – specifically in the way we design and build heating systems for homes, shops, factories, offices and the built environment: Infrared heating is extremely accurate in the way it can target particular zones and spaces. And a relatively small input of IR heating in the right zone of a building can deliver a very large payback in terms of overall saved energy cost.

In truth, the infant science of infrared heating needs many more champions such as Tony Robinson in order to make explicit and realise the benefits of the technology. HeatWorks magazine, in its own way, is doing its bit.

And I simply encourage all IR practitioners to step forward and share with us your best articles and views for consideration throughout our publishing schedule next year. With the right communications campaigns we can all work for IR development and growth together.

It would be a poor show indeed if Ceramicx itself were unable to walk this talk.  It therefore gives me great pleasure to be allowed the opportunity to be lecturing at Trinity College this Thursday in order to share the IR industrial perspective and to communicate the best of our IR know how to the engineering student audience.

For all interested I will this week be delivering an open lecture on the subject of Ceramic Infrared Emitter Production. The lecture will take place on Thursday December 01 2011: 15:00, Parsons Building Seminar Room 2, Trinity College Dublin. I hope to see you there!

Posted in ceramic heaters, ceramicx, infrared heaters, Infrared Heating, Infrared Heating Experts, Infrared Heating Technology | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ceramicx People and Production Development

November 17, 2011 by Frank Wilson

In the life of a Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) nothing counts more than its people: Indeed an SME company is many times more likely to be aware of this fact and to be actively engaged in making sure that the right people are deployed on the right tasks.

At Ceramicx we have great opportunity to fast track our people development and to give our talent the opportunity to become true practitioners in all aspects, namely research & product development; engineering; production; quality control; sales and marketing.

We are therefore delighted to be ringing the changes on a couple such moves this month: We know that it will serve the individuals and, ultimately, we know it will serve the net wealth of the company and the service given to the customer.

Padraig Courtney

Padraig Courtney has made a success of his day-to-day role as production manager – overseeing the entire process – from clay to complete and finished parts.  There are very few situations on the Ceramicx production line that Padraig has not been party to. He is therefore ideally placed to join our new Infrared Innovation Partnership team; now working alongside other researchers from the University of Limerick in our new two-year innovation partnership project funded by Enterprise Ireland and Ceramicx. As part of this Pádraig will earn a Master Engineering Degree that will be focused on “Novel manufacturing engineering and cost analysis modeling for process optimization in an SME setting”. At Ceramicx we are creating an explicit and scientific matrix involving all chemical, mechanical and electrical inputs and outputs of our process. There can be none better than Padraig to help the Partnership team with all the empirical facts of the matter.

Patrick Wilson

Meanwhile Padraig’s role has been taken up by new recruit Patrick Wilson. A graduate of Business Studies from Trinity with a Diploma in Management earned as part of a graduate management program with Kerry Group with several languages at his disposal, including Spanish, Portuguese and French, Patrick has spent the last number of years working for Kerry Group first leaving the company as a production Manager to join us Ceramicx Infrared Heat Consultants last month. Patrick might have seemed destined straightaway for our international sales effort. We believe, however, that his Ceramicx apprenticeship is best served from the start by bringing the skills and experience that he has gained in his role as a production manager for Kerry Group to bear on the Ceramicx production processes. This will allow him to gain an intimate knowledge of the product and the production process and allow any Sales in the future to be carried out from position of production understanding.

We raise a glass to our new practitioners and to their new horizons and to new successes at Ceramicx.

Slainte!

Posted in ceramic heaters, ceramicx, Ceramicx Ireland Ltd, Infrared Heating Consultants, Innovation Partnership Project, IR development | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Strength of place – know it and use it

October 21, 2011 by Frank Wilson

In these days of uncertain global economics those of us in business and in manufacturing surely owe it to each another to keep our feet firmly on the ground and to search out and communicate all the positives wherever they can be found.

Fakuma

View of the Messe entrance to Fakuma 2011

In my view the Fakuma exhibition in Friederichshafen, Germany this week provides some timely material in this vein: Fakuma is the annual domestic trade fair for Germany’s plastics manufacturing industries. From Day One, visitor attendance was high; buyer interest was keen and most machinery based exhibitors reported another year of record sales growth.

In part, of course, this may be due to worldwide manufacturing industry restocking and recovering from the credit crunch of 2008/09. Regardless of that, however, the recent facts are impressive. Euromap, the organisation which represents plastics machinery companies and which is dominated by German-speaking producers, now reports that European plastics machinery production volumes increased by 27.3% to 9.78 billion Euros in 2010 – and are also set for 10% further growth in 2011. Germany is by far the world’s biggest exporter of plastics machinery to all the nations of the world with a healthy 23.7% of global market share – nearly double that of its nearest rival, Japan.

The Friedr Freek stand at Fakuma

Ceramicx – helped in Germany by our good friends at Friedr Freek – is doing its bit to support and stay with this expansion in plastics machinery. We continue to aim to increase our share of the market; specifically by supplying quality infrared heating systems for thermoforming, blow moulding and other parts of the plastics sector.

Selection of Ceramicx components at Fakuma 2011

And since Ceramicx business is truly worldwide, we find much to applaud and appreciate in the way that Germany engineering companies continue to create new markets; reaching further into Eastern Europe for example and Russia. It all makes quite a contrast to the main headlines in Western Europe where political leaders fumble with the Euro and fiddle with the money supply.

 

Aside from reaffirming some business confidence and intelligence, this week’s Fakuma reminds me of three things:
a) always moderate your diet of mainstream media with some first-hand news from somewhere real.
b) some good business is always happening somewhere
b) never underestimate the particular powers of place

On that last point – and here you might see me signing off here with a small commercial – Ceramicx believes that our own West Cork location continues to offer manufacturers a truly positive environment for creativity, technology and manufacturing. Several trends point to a continuing investment and growth in manufacturing technology here – and not least from ourselves.

Our latest HeatWorks magazine contains articles on these opportunities in detail. Please don’t hesitate to contact myself directly to chat about any ins and outs at first hand. Many thanks again.

Posted in ceramicx, Fakuma 2011, Frankly Speaking, Freidr Freek, Infrared Heating, Thermoforming | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The people factor?

October 14, 2011 by Frank Wilson

I read something entertaining recently about ‘your best company salesman….He may not be a closer on many or any deals – but he never leaves his post. He’s always available on a 365; 24/7 basis. He’s always very well turned out – has great visibility and profile at all times and manages to get to the most far-flung locations with great effectiveness and minimal cost.’

Who could that be? The riddle about this paragon refers to the company website of course. At Ceramicx we believe it to be true and we therefore back our top sales resource to the full with ongoing investment and quality support.

Great competence in one area such as this pushes the envelope; raises the bar and asks questions of other parts of the business. And rather than levelling down, there is a tendency for other areas to rise to the challenge – in production; in service and in people skills.

This has certainly been happening for Weco International, our US friends and distributors. The current autumn edition of Heat Works magazine contains the full story of our partnership developments stateside.

In a nutshell – and against a background of US industrial uncertainty – Weco has this year managed to expand both its sales activities and to further grow its US territories through the forging of skilful partnerships in the infrared heating industry.

How has it done this? According to owner Brett Wehner, through some powerful core principles and through working with and through the right people. The Weco manifesto is based upon Persistence – Determination – Integrity – and via these guiding lights the company has this year opened up fresh markets in the New England states and also – looking Southward -  in Tennessee.

This is a remarkable achievement: What it tells me is that in an era of unlimited information and seemingly endless online time there are, in addition,  some special challenges and rewards for those that are able to raise their person-to-person game in the way that Brett and his team have managed.

It is essential of course that your best sales guy stays at his post 24/7 in the manner already described. But creativity; deal making; relationships; innovation – all these other things have been greatly liberated in recent years. Pay equal attention to these factors and business success can be greatly assured.

Posted in ceramicx, Heatworks, Infrared, Infrared Heating Experts, Infrared Heating Solutions, Infrared Heating Technology, Plastics Thermoforming, Thermoforming, Weco International | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment