“FLcone will Completely Change Winding Technology in the Next Year”
Interview: Özge Çağıl Sütcü
Japanese manufacturer of spinning machines Murata which has a sectoral history approx. 90 years, exhibited 2 kinds of new automatic winding machines in this ITMA 2023.
We made an interview Murata Machinery Managing Director & General Manger, Textile Machinery Division, Tetsuji Masai for our Tekstil Teknoloji magazine. Masai stated that FLcone will be a new global standard in the near future and started his words by explaining the features of the machines exhibited at ITMA 2023.
“One is the Process Coner “AIcone”, which was developed to pursue further user-friendliness while maintaining the high productivity and labor-saving features inherited from the previouos model ‘QPRO series’. The other one is the Process Coner ‘Flcone’, which was a reference exhibit (not official sales yet) as a concept. There are mainly 2 features in FLcone, one is Flawless pacakge: Like a flawless diamond, FLcone creates the highest quality pacakges. The other is Non-stop winding. FLcone enables to keep producing even if the yarn breakage happens thanks to our innovative technology. This will change the winding technology completely in the next years.”
Talking about the development processes of automatic winder machines, Masai said; “We spent around 5 years for AIcone and more than 10 years for FLcone for development. The biggest challenge was how we feed back customer’s voice to Aıcone because the benefits between easy manufacturing in our factory and user friendly design sometimes trades off.”
Masai said that they received very high evaluations from the customers during the fair and emphasized that the fair provided a great opportunity to show their technical capabilities and that ITMA was a memorable fair and a milestone in the auto winder industry when it comes to FLconem.
Emphasizing the importance of digitalization for a sustainable textile industry, Masai developed a new cloud data system for this purpose.
“This exhibition we featured the new cloud data system”
Masai said: “As it becomes increasingly difficult to secure human resources, we want to create an environment where predictive maintenance can be performed digitally, leading to even greater customer satisfaction. We have our system called MSS since many years now and we keep developing it constantly. This exhibition we featured the new cloud data system for our customers.”
Tetsuji Masai talked about the measures taken by Murata for a sustainable future and said they succeeded in reducing CO2 emissions by 85% in the production process of unit casing by changing the material from steel to glass-fiber plastic, and the drum material was also changed to recycled materials.
Masai stated that despite the visa problems, he also met with many Turkish customers at ITMA and said: “ITMA was a great oppotunity to show our high level of technical capabilities and have face to face communication with our customers. We do know and have heard about the difficulties of Visa in the past months nevertheless we are happy that still many were able to attend from Turkey.”
“Turkish textile market follows trends very quickly”
Tetsuji Masai emphasized that Turkey is a very important market for Muratec: “Turkey is a very important market for Muratec. Turkish textile market follows trends very quickly and adapts according to global market demands. Variety, flexibility and quick response with high quality are key for the turkish textile sector.We especially feel the strong potential demands for Vortex in Turkey. China is the major market for us in numbers due to its size. However Turkey is also on our top lists for sales as well as as a leader in flexibility, quality and variety of yarn kinds espcially for Vortex.” said.
“After Ukraine war, all conditions changed”
Making an assessment of the current situation and sales as we leave behind the first six months of the year, Masai: “So far this year has been good for sales and deliveries however We believe that year 2023 will be more severe situation than foreseen due to the previous years rise in costs. After Ukraine war, all conditions changed. The electrical fees were increased, then almost all material costs also increased. The policy rates were raised to stop inflation. As a result, emerging economie’s foreign currency reserves have been greatly reduced, making it very difficultfor financing sector. “It is very difficult for us to respond the current situation. We just hope that the global balances settle and that we can have a peacefull bright future for all nations.”
