Picture this: you have just been through a COVID-19 outbreak. The situation is finally under control and you can restart production. Then the power-rationing notice arrives:

The pandemic plus power rationing and production cuts have left small and medium-sized manufacturers struggling. At a moment like this, do you give up, or follow national policy and support the country’s rise? Most companies will choose the latter and put the bigger picture first. So, besides shutting down and sending staff home, is there another way to respond? Of course there is — here is what we suggest:

1. Prepare an emergency production plan and adjust production hours.

Companies can arrange production plans scientifically around their own process characteristics: stagger shifts and rotate rest days, make full use of weekends and nighttime for production, and improve HR efficiency. Buying production generators can also cushion the impact of rationing, so that output is maintained despite the power cuts.

2. Draw up a sound production plan

Schedule customer orders in a planned way, take stock of finished-goods inventory in good time, and stock up on the raw materials that are in short supply, so that output is protected and losses are reduced.
A sound production plan can follow these principles:
1. Minimum number of items:
Plan production around the smallest possible number of items.
2. Independent and specific items:
List actual, specific, buildable items rather than project groups or planning-list items.
3. Critical items:
List the items that have a major impact on production capacity, financial metrics or key materials. Items with a major impact on production capacity are those that strongly affect the production and assembly process.

3. Adjust your business direction and respond to the national supply-side structural reform policy

Since the start of this year, prices of various bulk raw materials have risen again and again, as the chart shows:

Because of the pandemic, production and business activity abroad have kept being disrupted, and China’s foreign trade has been booming for two years. But beneath what looks like a calm sea lie countless icebergs — one collision and the ship capsizes. Some countries, the United States and Canada among them, are raising raw-material prices to hold back China’s development: we export at our old cost level and then buy raw materials back at high prices to keep producing, so capital still holds the upper hand. The United States is also printing money at a frantic pace and buying large volumes of Chinese products; continuing to export blindly would put us at risk of a financial crisis.

Companies should therefore shift their business direction from export sales toward stimulating domestic demand instead. That also strengthens the country’s overall capability: only when the country is strong can businesses develop sustainably and soundly.

4. Upgrade production equipment to safeguard quality and raise efficiency

With a limited power supply, you can still raise capacity by upgrading production equipment in a targeted way. On one hand, improve scheduling and plan production sensibly: where some machines do not need to run, leave them idle as far as possible or run everything in a coordinated way, so as to save energy and stay efficient. On the other hand, raise the level of automation so that output can be increased and production targets met within the same limited time. In the packaging and printing industry, for example, a range of packaging-related machines is usually involved, such as paper cutters, folder gluers, film laminators, glazing machines and double-sided tape applicators. The speed of these machines can be raised to achieve more efficient production. For the double-sided tape applicator mentioned above, you can bring in a model independently developed by Wanzhi Automation.

It is mainly used to cut and apply double-sided tape automatically on the surface of various paper and paperboard products. Controlled by a PLC with touch screen, it offers single-, two- and multi-segment application modes, can apply several tape strips at the same level along the conveying direction, and allows the application length to be set freely. The machine is fitted with 2 tape applicator heads and can be supplied with one or multiple heads to suit customer requirements; material is fed automatically and working speed is about 50-90m/min (depending on product size).

It is hard, but there is no way back. Right now, all we can do is stay at our posts, raise efficiency, protect quality and do our utmost to keep the business running normally!

“We cut the cloth of our own R&D to fit each customer’s needs, square or round.” Wanzhi Automation is always on the move. To learn more about our automatic double-sided tape applicators, visit www.wanzhiauto.com or call 400-8860822 / 13711954178.