Cutting-edge extrusion and converting technology

Design, development and distribution of extrusion and converting technology are very much what Davis-Standard is all about, but it’s been apparent that the company recently has become more active in the markets it serves to help customers gain competitive edge. In Asia, a manufacturing facility in Suzhou, China represents Davis-Standard’s commitment to fully support customers throughout the region. Innovations are also being developed to specifically address requirements in the region. International Plastics News for Asia (IRNA) gathered the insights of Bob Preston, Davis-Standard CEO, and Fred Pereira, President of the company’s Asia-Pacific operations, on the evolution that will benefit customers in Asia.

IRNA: Since Davis-Standard reorganised just over 18 months ago, the group now has a more global outlook and more people who are technically oriented on the ground. How much of a challenge was it for you to develop your team to arm them with technical know-how and service-oriented outlook?

Mr. Pereira: In getting people specifically within the industry, one of our advantages has been that we are well known as a company. We are in the apex of the industry in terms of capability. So, people do know us. We have been in the ground on Asia Pacific for a long time; it’s just that we are doing it with an increased intensity. However, the pool of candidates who are highly technical isn’t that high so you have to have a very concerted look. If my memory serves me right, over the last year, I think we’ve gone from about probably 15 people in the region to perhaps over 80 people now, but our talent acquisition plan is still on-going. So although, you know, we’ve added all these people, they still continue to add not just sales people but also technical people and service people.

So that’s an on-going process but we do have some really good people.

Mr. Preston: Fred has the opportunity to translate all those products up into Asia. It’s amazing how much success we’re having, because [in the past] we’ve only focused our 10 different platforms in North America, where we’re number one in a lot of these areas. So it’s been great getting a great reception by translating these platforms out to Asia and Latin America.

IRNA: How are you leveraging this as you expand further in Asia, and help you grow your business?

Mr. Pereira: The biggest help will be for our customers because we now have presence on the ground. We have a plant, we have service capability and we have spare parts, so our response time has increased dramatically – and the customers want that. They don’t want to wait for weeks and months for someone to come and look at the machine or service themachine. We can respond in real time here in the region. At the same time we are able to leverage the capability that exists in the US. So we’re not recreating that unit, we are marrying the two so that together, you know, it’s really a leveraged approach to serve our customers.

Mr. Preston: We’re getting a great response from our customers. For instance, we’ve sold our medical tubing line to a healthcare company in Suzhou. They had a problem with the gearbox and they typically would have to call us up in the US, and we’d have to send a service technician out. Now we can handle that locally from our Suzhou plant, which is down the street. Instead of waiting several days, maybe a week, for somebody to have a visa to get here, the guy just hops in his car and be there in five minutes. And this particular case, it happened to be that they, actually their employee, had unfortunately dropped the ball. But nevertheless we were able to help them resolve it very quickNike Air Flight Huarache