Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/550325
40 tobaccoasia MANUFACTURING NEWS 制造新闻 Worldwide TOMRA Launches Website TOMRA Sorting Solutions, the world- wide leader in sensor-based sorting and processing technology for the tobacco and raw materials industries, is pleased to announce the availability of the Chinese language version of its website, the newest addition in TOMRA's effort to be closer to the customer and to serve them in their own language. Users can now restrict language and conduct searches and find the available informa- tion in their preferred language. The website not only features content relevant to Chinese visitors, it also offers a social media stream of TOMRA's videos on YouKu, China's most popular video website. TOMRA will keep investing in translations. In 2015 the company plans to offer numerous additional languages. Egypt Eastern Egypt's Malawi Investment Malawi president Peter Mutharika recent- ly welcomed the Egyptian Eastern Tobacco Company (ETC) for its interest to invest in the country after the firm on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding with Malawi government to venture into cigarette manufacturing in the country. Mutharika gave the nod to the deal when he met the owners of the company and said tobacco is one of the nation's largest sources of income as it contrib- utes about 70% of the country's econo- my. However, Mutharika said apart from exporting unfinished tobacco, the crop could bring in more foreign exchange if the added value processes were done right in Malawi. The president said it would be profitable to produce cigarettes in Malawi and it could boost the tobacco industry. "Malawi is a large producer of tobacco, however for years there have been little improvements in terms of value addition," said Mutharika. "Today I am pleased to sign the memorandum of understanding between the Malawi government and the Eastern Tobacco Company of Egypt which will be involved in cigarette making. These cigarettes will be sold either within or Hauni's Remote Service for Fast Online Help Time is money, as any manufacturer knows. So it's always essential to get a machine which is down due to a defect back up and running with the utmost speed. Hauni now offers Remote Service, a rapid and innovative remote diagnosis system. Whenever a fault is displayed on a machine, the present status can be sent by the operator via touch screen to Hauni for fault analysis, excluding any unspecific or incomplete information. In practice, this is almost like having a Hauni specialist right there on the spot to check over a machine – whether it's a cigarette maker, a filter maker, or a logistics unit – and personally identify and correct the fault. As downtime is so expensive in a manufacturing setup, Remote Service provides a novel approach to minimize the length of the troubleshooting process. Ideally there should be no need whatsoever for an engineer to visit the site in person, which also makes sense from an environmental point of view. "There's a tremendous variety of ways in which we can detect and correct faults via remote access, particularly on M-generation machines," explains remote administrator Andreas Korb who works for Hauni's technical support service. "But this system also works extremely well for machines belonging to the previous generation. We expect to be able to deal with about 60% of all problems this way," Korb continues. "In cases where we can't actually rectify them, it's still useful to be able to analyze most of the problems in advance before actually deploying an engineer to fix the problem on site and bring any necessary spares along." Hauni's Remote Service requires special hardware and software which Hauni puts at a customer's disposal. A monthly servicing contract specifies the extent and type of services to be provided. System tests carried out at locations including Indonesia, Chile, and Mexico not only produced excellent results – the response was also encouraging: "The fast response we get from the Remote Service System has been very useful, especially in terms of time and money savings," says a project engineering manager from Chile. Hauni plans to expand the range on offer by the end of this year. "Our branches in various countries will take on some of the jobs to make sure the service is available across time zones," announces Korb. Security is an absolutely top priority issue for sensitive customer data when servicing via remote access. This is one reason why connections with Hauni are always customer initiated. When a member of customer staff opens an electronic ticket onthe machine's touch screen or on a servicing computer, that action immediately sets up what is known as a communication tunnel to Hauni. Tunnelling is maintained until that ticket has been dealt with and closed. When a ticket is transmitted, it is accompanied by details such as "machine stopped" or "production not affected", the type of fault and details of any analysis jobs which have already been done. That information is e-mailed not only to Hauni technical support staff but also simultaneously to the person in charge at the customer's factory, thereby ensuring that the customer is always aware of what is happening. In fact, the experts at Hauni cannot actually access the data and settings for the affected machine via a Plug&Work box at the customer's facility until another confirmation is received by the customer. This rules out any possibility of unauthorized access. "All data is encrypted before it goes through the communication tunnel, and the manufacturing equipment is also protected by firewalls," explains Korb. Customer staff and Hauni engineers also use VoIP, video conferencing or the chatboard on the machine to communicate – either until the problem itself has been rectified or the repair procedure has been agreed on.