DEES Hydraulic on making your mark

SPC DEES Hydraulic is a well-known hydraulic press manufacturer with factories in Taiwan and China. Its main products include deep drawing and die spotting presses as well as related hydraulic press technology. 

Rolern Lee, Deputy General Manager, DEES Taiwan, outlines to INTERNATIONAL METALWORKING NEWS FOR ASIA (IMNA) how the company has increased its manufacturing flexibility, constructed global distribution networks, improved quality standards, and reduced manufacturing costs as well as turn-around times. 

IMNA: Please give a brief background to your company and its products. Please explain your philosophy, mission and objectives?

DEES Hydraulics was formed in 1976 in Taiwan, so we are almost 40 years old. We have been in China since 2000 with complete manufacturing facilities which we built from scratch.

Our mission from day one has always been to develop people. We have people working for us who have been with us for almost 40 years. We are a family-owned business – our president has emphasised the importance of developing people and creating the correct mind-set that would translate into excellent quality control and great products. Our sole focus and specialty is the hydraulics press business.

In 1976, the first machine we built was a hydraulic press brake. We then produced shears (although press brakes were still our main business). In 1998/9, we started supplying more to the automotive industry. We shipped hydraulic presses and press brakes all over the world. Now, we have a full product line that serves the entire automotive industry from tandem lines, die spotting and try-out presses to hemming presses. Our specialty now is hydraulic presses – we no longer make press brakes.

Our mother company in Taiwan has bought a new land and is planning to build a new factory in 2015. This will triple the manufacturing space available. At the beginning of 2014, we moved to our new factory in China, which is almost double the size of our previous factory.

IMNA:  Any recent successes and achievements?

Lee: Sales of our hydraulic presses have been reaching new heights over the past couple of years. We have a factory in China and in Taiwan. Taiwan is our corporate office. I manage all operations in China, where we have been for 14 years. We deliver a lot of presses to automotive manufacturers in China and business is good here.

In terms of achievements, we recently delivered a 2400-tonne double action hydraulic press to Volvo in China. We also recently delivered a specialised die spotting press to Land Rover/Jaguar’s new factory in China.

We have actually sold two presses to Volvo– one is at its first plant near Szechuan (a die spotting press) and the 2400-ton double action hydraulic press is for Volvo’s Daijing factory. Volvo is using this press to perform initial forming operations for its cars as well as for die try-out. It will probably manufacture about 20,000 XC60 models, change the design in a couple of years and then manufacture them here in China. It bought the double-action press because tooling from Europe is double-action. We should complete installation of this press next month.

Jaguar is using our press as a die spotting machine and to check tooling. The press uses a servo motor that controls the input/output of the oil through the cylinder. It is a very precise machine for die spotting with slide repeatability of 0.005.

We are currently utilising servo motors to increase the production capacity of our hydraulic presses and adding accumulators to increase press speed (on our tandem lines, for example). Every year, we submit patents and have received more than 12 patents in the last 14 years in China. We have devoted a lot of time and effort to becoming a strong hydraulic press manufacturer and a reliable partner for our customers.

IMNA: What are your views on the current business climate for the industries you serve?

Lee: I think that the electronics market may fall off a little next year, but the automotive market will remain strong. There are a few new car models coming out and a lot of new companies are building stamping lines and increasing their production. Our main focus will continue to be the automotive market although we also supply presses to other industries, such as home appliances.

Over the past two years, there has been a lot of home appliance manufacturing but this has slowed down a little now because of real estate issues. People think that there is going to be a housing bubble so they are holding off buying new homes.

It is tough to get into the aerospace market which, in China, is government-owned so you need to be a state-owned company. We also supply to the forging market. However, we only build hydraulic presses for metal forming markets - automotive clients are really our main customer base.

IMNA:  Who are your customers? Which issues are of major importance for them at the moment and how are you addressing these issues?

Lee: 70% of our business (for the Taiwanese and Chinese factories) is based in China. The remaining 30% is scattered around the world (mainly Asia, US, South America and Europe). Of our share (70%) of customers in China, roughly 40% is made up of international companies who are based in China, 30% are Taiwanese companies in China and the rest are domestic Chinese manufacturers.

We supply almost press technology to all of the main Chinese automotive manufacturer OEMs as well as Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers (with tandem lines, for example). We have agents around the world selling our products.

The most important issue for our customers is always service. The automotive industry is so demanding that downtimes must be kept to a minimum. Preventative service and assistance is always needed. You need to be based in China to properly support and service customers in China, which is one of the reasons that we built our factory in China. In China, we have over 160 employees (120 in the factory - over 15 electrical engineers and 40 hydraulics engineers).These are the people that can service presses – they can usually be with a customer within 24/48 hours, depending upon transportation issues. If the customer is more local, we can be there within 4-8 hours.

IMNA: What is your strategic and technical focus/vision over the next few years?

Lee: One of our main targets is to build faster hydraulic presses. We are spending a lot of research investment into developing a faster hydraulic press. Most hydraulic presses run four parts per minute – we want to double and triple this speed. This is crucial, from our perspective. Right now, we are at about six-eight parts per minute (depending upon the depth of the deep draw). We will probably launch a new product line late next year to reflect these new developments.

We are also going to grow the press technology that we initially built for Land Rover. This was a very special press that uses a servo motor as the main energy source for the piston pump. We want to grow that part of the business. Right now, most people are using AC motors but, to be energy-efficient, you have to move towards servo motors. We are therefore developing an entire hydraulic press product line based on employing servo motors to save energy, increasing the flow rate of the hydraulic pump, and making the press more accurate. Servo motors are getting better and more reliable – overheating problems have also been addressed.

Our new product line will be based on using servo motors but our main focus is to use the servo motor on a 2000-ton hydraulic press which can be used as a stamping line. That is our key priority right now. We will start building this press next year so I expect that, by the end of next year, this should be completed. It will be a continuous testing process.

Normally, we spend less than 2% of our annual turnover in R&D but this new R&D project and machine-build is going to take more than 10% of our annual turnover. We will learn a lot through continuous testing and we prefer to refine the press in our factory first before selling it to customers. Not many press manufacturers actually build a machine in this way – they usually only research a new technology based on the orders that they receive.

IMNA: Which trends do you see developing in sheet metal markets?

Lee: The sheet metal market is changing. Mechanical presses are moving towards servo design. Hydraulic presses need to be more energy-efficient for customers. The new trend is therefore towards integrating more servo motors into these presses. Greater power and speed, more control, more energy efficiency and higher productivity for presses are real requirements in the market.