This is an interview with Andrej Selan, Chief Operations Officer at SIP Machinery about the modernization of production in Slovenia-based, farm machinery manufacturing company which is represented in Ireland by Farmec Ireland.
What kind of investments are you seeing today in the production and what is the purpose of these investments?
Investment could be divided into two parts, namely investments in hardware and investments in infrastructure. When we’re making decisions on investments, we above all strive for improvements in working conditions, optimisation of the work process and improved orderliness in both production and in its surroundings.
By investing in machinery and equipment, the production is technologically updated, and we strive to ensure lean manufacturing and greater flexibility. This way we optimise the material flow and, with the increasing volume of production, we eliminate the bottlenecks of the production.
Can you name five major investments in the last year and describe the advantages they bring?
There are the higher-performance bending press, to ensure bending of larger workpieces, and a smaller flexible bending press, to ensure material flow, to emphasize just two among five major investments. In the area of welding, we are richer for a robotic welding cell with two robotic arms and several positioners.
We will continue to work on the automation of welding in the coming years, when we will add new robotic working positions to the 16 existing ones, which will allow even greater flexibility and stability of the process. We have placed great emphasis on modernising the heat treatment process this year.
In October, we launched a new induction heat treatment furnace. Also a new grinding machine for external and internal cylindrical grinding and a lathe for processing larger work pieces will contribute to the quality of machine elements and increased capacities.
3 year warranty for SIP products
This year SIP is celebrating the 65th anniversary of SIP Machine Industry. During this time, SIP has reached certain important milestones: from the design of their first production program to the development of the brand and to the revival that the Slovenia-based company is experiencing recently on the market.
SIP has recently set the goal of becoming a leading specialist in grassland harvesting. Much has been done in the development of new products, the use of new types of materials and technologies, the refinement of control processes and, last but not least, the education of the sales and sales network, and customer support. Sip claims to be one of the few suppliers of agricultural machinery that boasts the lowest number of complaints during the two-year general warranty period.
To establish SIP as a leading grass-harvesting specialist, the company has decided to extend, under certain conditions, a two-year guarantee period, without limitation, to the third year. This undoubtedly aims to raise the SIP brand’s reputation as a reliable supplier of robust and innovative solutions, increase the value of the machine in the secondary market and, among other things, make it more attractive to the most demanding professional users.
