The five day forum organised this spring, attracted nearly 40 participants from the China Cotton Association, top Chinese spinning mills, the Taiwan Textile Federation, the Taiwan Spinners’ Association, and Taiwanese spinning mills. The topic was automation in the spinning industry based upon the lack of skilled labour and sustainable development, including discussion sessions on automation realisation, product innovation and spinning mills’ core competency. A subsequent plant visit was arranged to the highly automated spinning mill of Far Eastern New Century Corporation.
<br> Since 1998, the Far Eastern New Century Corporation Hukou Mill has adopted the fully automatic Rieter system, including ring spinning machines (70000 spindles) and rotor spinning machines (2800 rotors). To ensure perfect product appearance and efficiency, the company integrated the whole process, from fibre preparation to stocking and delivering products with highly automated equipment like link systems between roving, ring and winding, automation transportation system for laps, silver cans, yarn bobbin, automatic packing and stocking warehouse.
Even after running for 16 years, the machines still remain in a fairly good condition. After launching Rieter spinning machines, the manpower went down to 10 operators/10000 spindles and production efficiency 5 per cent higher than that of the peers, and the stable Com4®yarn quality is well recognised by their customers. And that’s why the company ordered another nine Rieter R 60 fully automatic rotor spinning machines (3600 rotors) in 2012.
Representatives from top mainland spinning enterprises, like Esquel Group and Huamao Group were impressed by the Taiwanese spinning mill management experience and concept of total automation in the spinning mill.
