Effe Advances Its Acceleration Every Year in Textile Industry to a Higher Point
Effe offers sustainable and innovative solutions to the enterprises that manufacture products ranging from yarn to garment. Effe, being the third among the most exporting firms in 2018, leaves its mark on the textile industry with its PASHA Stenter machine.
This month’s Textile Technology magazine covers our interview with Celal Iri and İhsan Mokanoglu, board members of EFFE in the exclusive coverage of ‘Turkish Textile Machinery Industry’. Below we present to our readers.
What kind of a year was 2019 for Effe? Please describe its innovations, breakthroughs, and investments.
We can easily remark that year 2019 was dynamic, fruitful, and very productive regarding our company that holds an important position in textile machinery industry. We are leaving a year behind that allowed us many innovations and developments such as international and domestic exhibitions, new markets, new collaborations, new machinery designs, continuous developments of current machinery through R&D and customer requests, new team members, applied investment support programs, and gained documentation and certifications. It has been a productive year in terms of special product trainings organized by the suppliers, seminars, and business development meetings. We have realized supplier communication in order to have the utmost benefit both in buying and providing services as well as in-company trainings, and workshops with the commercial agents. Each meeting paved the way for new ideas, and we have seen the fruits of our efforts with the occurrence of each new idea. Seeing the actual achievements motivated us more, and therefore, we pay much effort in order to expand altogether through this motivation. The motivation of the staff in the facility to do their jobs in the best possible way adds value to the entire company. We build another floor each day to the skyscraper of success, which is flowed by the whole world with great interest.
Taking a brief glance at this year;
We participated in the DTG exhibition in January of last year with our representative TEXBIZ. The exhibition took place in Bangladesh, where lies a great investment potential for textile machinery industry and an important market, which is preferred for the vast majority of the production of leading textile brands. We attended the 12. International Garment, Textile Machinery and Accessories Exhibition IGATEX that took place in February in Pakistan’s Karachi with our representative company ATME. We presented our PASHA Stenter machine in the booth of EGE TMF Exhibition in Denizli, which was organized second time this year. We joined Knittech Exhibiton, which is the biggest weaving technologies fair in Asia, in March with our representative firm ARHA. We completed the first half of the year with Barcelona ITMA exhibition. We received much praise with the demonstration of PASHA Stenter machine involving both natural gas and thermal oil heating systems and features that make a difference. We received sixteen Stenter machine orders in Barcelona ITMA Exhibition which was beyond our expectations. The last exhibition for this year that we participated in was FESPA EURASIA, in which we presented the machinery and the units that were used in digital printing applications. Our visitors were informed about our innovations and developments in all the exhibitions that we have attended to. We had meetings regarding present and new projects, presented machinery and units, and discussed end-user requests in detail.
“Reliability of our brand has begun to be heard increasingly”
Brazil, India, the USA, Indonesia, and Tunisia have joined to the list of countries that Effe units and machinery is operational. In addition to these countries, an order has been placed from a new country, Mauritius. Actually, we can safely state that the acceleration of the speed of reaching out new markets have been parallel to the acceleration of receiving orders. When a customer, who has been satisfied with the performance of our products, and preferred us for their next necessity, we call this ‘repeat order’. The repeat order amount in the PASHA Stenter machine has especially scaled up, hence, the reliability and features of our machinery have been further sensed in the industry. Production, assembly, and service teams’ success have been gathered with the achievement of the machinery, and therefore, an order was followed by one another. Right after a sale to a country, a sale to another one followed it. We received 35 repeat orders just for PASHA Stenter machine since the second half of 2016.
Please tell us about your R&D organization?
Looking at the change in our facility, we can easily underline that our team is growing stronger. The number of is now over 140, and we established our R&D center with incorporation of new team members aboard, who are experts in their respective fields. The R&D center is that we are talking about is not just a section of our facility. Here is further information on the subject.
Realization of the configuration of private industry R&D centers have enabled us to create an industry infrastructure that advances parallel with the global developments, to increase competitive capacity of our country, to manufacture efficient and value-added products, and to have appropriate conditions to bolster up production based structure. Effe, focused on innovation and development, applied in 2018 to have its place in this formation, achieved the necessary conditions, and after the completion of audit process, starting from January 10, 2019, began to operate as an R&D center. R&D center manager Nejat Hocaoglu received our R&D Center document in the Technological Development Zones and R&D Centers Award Ceremony, dated November 19.
Our R&D staff consists of 19 employees. Of our 12.000 square meter facility area, 350 square meter is used as the office space for the R&D center, while, laboratory, testing, and prototyping workshops operate in a 250 square meter area. We have a total of 600 square meter zone for our R&D Center. We are one of the R&D Centers among 1213 in Turkey, 413 located in Istanbul, and 176, which carries on business in machinery and equipment manufacturing industry.*
*According to the T.C. Industry and Technology Ministry, General Directorate of R&D Incentives data dated November 30, 2019
Can you please inform us about the parameters that affected your success in export operations such as global sales and technical service network and worldwide organizational structure?
According to the Machinery Exporters Association database, which has more than fourteen thousand members, we are the third company with the most export sales in textile machinery and garment machinery products group. Referring to the letter we received due to being in the first five, we can underline that the steps that we took so far are the guarantee for our next actions.
In 2019, we started collaborating with new commercial representative firms in new countries around the globe. We have officially empowered our sales network in the Portugal, Brazil, Morocco, France, Tunisia, North India, Sri Lanka, Peru, Thailand, and Indonesia. We are a leading brand in meeting customer satisfaction with the support of our sales network, which is organized in a total of 20 countries
What are your works in the development and innovation of your products? Can you please tell us about other outstanding machines of your company besides PASHA Stenter machine?
In aiming to lead the textile machinery industry, we are well aware that manufacturing decent machines would not suffice, and we had to continue to produce innovations and improve the built machinery. There are differences in the PASHA that we launched in 2016 with the current model. These differences were realized by gathering the creative ideas of our R&D center as well as various suggestions and expectations that we received from our customers. We applied user-friendly and value-added developments and improvements to not only stenter machine but also all our machinery in our product range. Optic bleaching machines, ultrasonic edge trimming and tuft trimming-sewing machines, together with the machinery that is new to our production range; the latest solutions we provide to customer requirements for the stenter machine have, through over-platform implementation, chamber built-in edge drying unit and conveyor band inside the chambers applications. Moreover, we took Technological Product Note (TUR) for our PASHA stenter machine within the last year.
Last year, we completed Technological Product Investment Incentive Program, which supports investments on manufacturing of technology based products in the country, in audit stage. We are expecting to see developments on this in the following January. We are hoping to receive support for our forthcoming investments with the acceptance of our application, which is aimed at commercializing technological and brand-new products that emerged through our R&D activities, creating value-added merchandise for national economy, increasing technological product exports by being in the international markets. We can list machining machines and press brake units among the machinery that will add value to our production facility. In addition, we can highlight the patents we obtained that will enhance the brand value of our company. We patented three of our products this year. Our patented products are beltless conveyor unit, in-cabin edge drying unit and flue gas heat recovery units.
What are your plans, innovations, and goals for 2020?
There is the investment incentive program application that we’ve talked about, which we aim to finalize in 2020. Due to our foresight that the coming year will be more active with respect to the past one, we plan to move to a larger production facility. Bu will actualize this plan this year. Manufacturing in a 30 thousand square meter facility will guide us to be more productive and efficient. Entering new markets, making commercial representative agreements in new countries, and receiving more repeat orders are amongst our goals for the new year.
What are the reasons behind your success and being preferred? Can you please explain considering the factors such as producing models and technologies as a result of having a very successful R&D department, or high quality and fast after-sales technical service?
In order to mention the reasons for being preferred; humankind tend to choose options that will provide the most benefit. The companies, which cares for better results, therefore, prefers us. We like to be told through our customers rather than explaining ourselves, but nevertheless, we do not hesitate to indicate our strengths when asked.
It is required to use high quality raw materials that form the product in order to manufacture a decent and reliable machine. Later, this is followed by the quality necessity of design, production, craftsmanship, and commercial units. The required physical conditions are covered whence high quality raw material, commercial unit and good craftsmanship are provided. However, we also have the software side in our business. The state of the art software that revives metal allows us to build the best machinery. In the process beginning from design to delivery of the product, every unit demonstrates their difference together with performing their job titles in the best way. We are talking about a staff that manufactures third generation stenter machines with 20 years of experience and combines their affection to the metal. During this time period, innovative ideas from the team members are combined with the customer needs, firstly in design room, and later on in the production phase and finally came to life.
Every new idea comes to life advances the company
Besides the efforts of design, production, R&D, sales, import, and export team members, one of the main conditions to be successful in textile machinery industry is to have an active after-sales technical service team that gets involved after the machines start operating. Our after-sales technical service team is reachable 7 days 24 hours and performs services in the expected time period throughout the world.
The advantages we offer to our customers, that being the only company**, which designs and produces all the units of the manufactured stenter machine, enhances the likelihood to be preferred for technical service. We offer extended warranty for the units that we manufactured and our commercial representatives hold stocks for spare parts. One of our distinctions is to solve the problem before causing a halt on the production by immediately providing spare parts when an issue occurs.
As a result, continuous improvement of our technology, adding value to our products with the solutions aimed at design needs, and being able to provide effective and rapid after-sales technical service enhanced our general service and product quality. This let us to be preferred with each passing day. Repeat orders from the current customers and referencing their satisfaction affected the buying decisions of our new customers. We can also add that being a reliable brand also has a major importance to be preferred by the customers. 2019 was a year that we, once more, showed the dependability of our brand. The orders we received were prepared for delivery on time, delivered, assembled and finally became operational. All these processes were carried out just as all the parts in a clock perform their assignment for a clock to be functional. Every team member, from design to the operational stage, who participated in the process, added value to the product by thinking or touching. Today we know that we are good, but this does not mean that we are too good to be better in the future. Improvement is always followed by change, and I want to remark that we will take many more steps in the way of improvement.
**Excluding weft control unit, electric motors, burners, inverters, and automation equipment
Can you please briefly tell us about the technologies that you will introduce in ITM 2020 Exhibition, your expectations from it and further goals?
ITM 2020 will be the platform that we will introduce our PASHA stenter machine, which answers the customers’ requests and expectations in the best way. We believe that we will attract much attention with the newly joined machines to our product line as well as the new user-friendly solutions in PASHA, and surprise add-ons to its design, hardware and software. Our preparations are in full speed.
Interview: Z. Seda Demirdelen
