23/9/2022 |Articles are machine translated
The joint meeting was opened by the new Chairman of the Supplier Division, Petr Novák, member of the AutoSAP Board of Directors and Director of the Automotive Division at JTEKT Europe. He introduced the main objective of the meeting, which was to discuss the sharing of “best practices” and possible cost-saving measures. During the morning, Zdeněk Petzl then spoke on the topic, informing the members about the most important activities AutoSAP has implemented for the benefit of its members in recent weeks and summarizing the measures taken by the Czech government to combat the energy crisis. Martina Hlavsová, a partner at E&Y, which focuses on the energy sector, then informed the meeting guests about the reasons for the current energy crisis and the preparations of the regulatory framework for the support.
However, the main part of the morning programme was the sharing of experiences from manufacturing companies in the Czech Republic and abroad. Among the measures introduced, for example, at MOTOR Jikov Group, which were presented by Tomáš Prášil, a member of the company’s board of directors, was a focus on the possible shortage of natural gas, including the elimination of its high price (key for a pressure foundry) by using other technologies (liquid propane). The company is also addressing improvements in melt management in the foundry, or shifting production to weekends due to lower electricity prices, and other regime-saving measures are being introduced on a daily basis. Petr Novák also presented his experience within JTEKT, where he carries out consistent monitoring and management of energy consumption in individual plants with subsequent suggestions for energy saving measures. For example, at the Koyo Bearings plant in Olomouc, they have installed new cogeneration units, they are making greater use of heat recovery, replacing compressors with newer and less energy-intensive ones, introducing LED lighting, replacing air conditioners with adiabatic cooling and in the future they also want to focus on photovoltaics on roofs and open areas. Among examples from other European plants, Petr Novák cited the replacement of the preheating of high-pressure aluminium casting from gas to electricity in Pardubice and the construction of a wind power plant in Belgium. One of the less traditional measures implemented in France is the painting of roofs with white paint to reduce the internal temperature in production halls, thus saving energy for cooling in the summer months.
But it is not just energy that the automotive supply sector in the Czech Republic is facing. The host of the meeting, Tomáš Vondrák, Director of Continental Automotive in the Czech Republic, pointed this out at the beginning of the meeting. “His” plant, as well as the entire industry, is undergoing a major transformation and it is Brandýs nad Labem that is setting trends in the digitalization of production within the entire global group. “We continue to move at a rapid pace in the introduction of automation, standardisation and digitalisation. We have prepared a concept that digitises the company as a whole, holistically. We are working with the entire network of Continental plants, holding meetings and workshops, and training others how to implement a similar concept in other plants,” T. Vondrák told the magazine Český autoprůmysl in June. Guests were able to see for themselves during a subsequent tour of the plant, including a presentation of the autonomous AutoStore warehouse.
