Savio Macchine Tessili (SMT) is considered an industry leader in automatic winders, two-for-one twisters (TFOs) and rotor spinning frames. With its manufacturing plants located in Italy, the Czech Republic, China and India, SMT – established in 1911 in Pordenone, Italy – has been making deeper inroads into the Indian market. Textile Magazine caught up with Valter De Carli, Regional Vice President (India), Savio Macchine Tessili to find out how the company has been tackling the challenges posed by the ongoing pandemic
Across the world, the corona virus-triggered pandemic has certainly hit all kinds of industries, and the textile sector has been one of them. In the textile machinery segment, companies have been struggling to stay above water with new strategies and innovative approaches to ensure that the losses are not long term. Presenting a perspective of how the pandemic has affected Savio Macchine Tessili’s performance, Valter De Carli, Regional Vice President (India), says, “In terms of business, we have obviously seen a drop year-on-year. From an economic point of view, the big challenge has been the uncertainty for new machinery investments from our customers and the decrease of textile products’ consumption.”
“From an industrial point of view, despite the difficult situation, SMT has continued with prompt feedback, and timely after-sales service and delivery of spare parts to our customers worldwide. Employees worked from home during the lockdown in Italy and continued daily operations while providing assistance and fulfilling the customers’ orders,” he adds. The silver lining for SMT was that despite the pandemic there was a quick bounce-back from some regions. Explaining the reasons for the performance turnaround, De Carli says: “In 2020 we saw a huge decrease in the consumption of textile products but we started getting orders from some regions which recovered quickly from the pandemic.”
“For instance, China seems to have recovered fully, fast and first. I would say the recovery rate has been proportionate to the efforts made in tackling the pandemic. In general, those markets which got extensive economic or financial support from either the central government or other global financial organisations have bounced back and even outperformed, like the recent cases of Pakistan and Bangladesh,” De Carli points out. As such, it has been a busy period at SMT during the last one year of global lockdown with work continuing on new innovations, products and technologies. Barring a few short hiccups, things that were in the planning stage continued undisturbed.
Focus on Technology
“Our research and development activities and ongoing new projects’ development were not as severely affected by the situation. Technology and quality improvements in textile machinery engineering are a must. SMT has a strong focus on research and development with a team of over 80 dedicated textile machinery engineers. Up to 5% of the sales turnover is earmarked for research and development. We are focusing on new projects, digitalization and automation for providing our customers innovative solutions to maximise their machinery return on investment. We have already implemented digital tools for providing better support to our customers and technicians,” De Carli informs. While the pandemic has brought about changes in other sectors such as healthcare and commercial aviation, it has had no such impact on the textile machinery domain, De Carli opines.
“Automation and digital solutions were the big drivers for SMT’s product development even prior to the pandemic and so we have continued on the same path. The requirement for integrated automation in the spinning process is increasing while the trend is now in favour of small yarn batches for production. This means offering new bespoke solutions to increase flexibility in the spinning process. For example, Multi-Link®, the latest automated solution from SMT that connects multiple ring spinning frames to one winder is in response to the requirement for flexibility. Multi-Link makes automation possible in all those cases where it was previously not economical or easily feasible such as in the replacement segment,” De Carli states.
Ensuring Service Outreach
Meanwhile, travel restrictions due to the pandemic’s geographical spread has made installation and servicing of machines increasingly difficult. This has pushed machinery manufacturers to offer remote assistance through online and virtual platforms. SMT too has launched new digital tools to offer support services. “We never stopped providing global support to customers and technicians even at the height of the pandemic. This has been possible thanks to our people and the implementation of digital tools. In this field we have two separate needs to fulfil: installation which cannot be done remotely and the following supporting activity,” De Carli says.
“Having a long-established worldwide network of service centres, we could ensure continuity of installations and commissioning tasks,” he adds. For the supporting activity, SMT has launched new digital tools to overcome the current travel restrictions in order to ensure machinery effectiveness. Technical service has a new and innovative augmented reality tool to quickly carry out troubleshooting functions, improve processes and increase machine utilisation time. This remote assistance is powered by Team Viewer Pilot®, an application that allows interaction in augmented reality. Thanks to this application, SMT experts from their Italian headquarters can support field technicians at the customer site, in real time, through video sessions for faster troubleshooting.
Another digital tool has been the online training module organised by Savio India Academy. “SMT has always devoted extraordinary attention to all aspects of technical assistance and training to assist customers in terms of improving their skills and knowledge,” De Carli says, who is optimistic of the company performing well in the near future. “The first wave of the pandemic caused much damage because it took us unawares and we were not prepared with any countermeasures,” he points out. Sharing more details, he elaborates: “The very first wave also those countries the most which supply textile machinery while the following waves hit the buying countries.”
In that sense, the year 2021 is not so bad. “We are now conscious about how to handle the pandemic and moreover though the virus is still out there, we know that it now has an expiry date and till that time we have to stay out of trouble. As of now, there is a very strong demand for automatic winders, only limited by the still erratic supply chain. I do believe 2021 will be a very good year and by the beginning of 2022 we should be able to achieve full normalcy,” De Carli states, and adds, “Our company has gained some valuable insights and learning from the pandemic and therefore we are now well-prepared to tackle any such challenges in the future.”
The Fighting Spirit SMT in its 110+ history has survived two world wars, several global economic downturns and many local crises in the textile sector in various parts of the world. “Those global recessions of the past were much worse for the business compared to the current pandemic. No one is really prepared for such challenging events but we are on a permanent alert mode. Be it a pandemic, a technology challenge, a price war or anything else, there is always a reason for a good fight out there,” De Carli says. Wrapping up the interaction he expresses his deep sympathy for India which is now engaged in a renewed and tougher battle with the virus. “I believe this is the last battle and eventually we all will win this war. Looking forward to be back in India soon,” he says on a concluding note.