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DENMARK
Vulkan Daek: Focus on Quality
the plant has its visual inspection for the obvious damage that might cause a rejection, and then the casing is passed through the SDS shearography machine. Vulkan Daek use a full version that checks both sidewalls and tread. Henrik Nielsen is clear that this use of shearography has reduced the number of casings rejected further down the line and reduced his return rate to virtually nothing. However, here the SDS shearography feeds an SDS PTS laser pressure test machine that, at light pressure detects any sidewall damage that might lead to a blow out later in life. This is an expensive addition to the quality control but Nielsen is convinced that
as it builds one it prepares the next, ensuring a quick process. Nielsen has plans to speed this up even more. “Ringtreads weigh more than a single person is supposed to lift so we are developing an automatic loader for the Ringbuilder. We have had the system designed and modelled by the local college and we have a robotics specialist in Aaarhus building the prototype for us this summer. It will make the operation safer and more efficient,” says Nielsen.
There is still a percentage of production that is flat tread and this is managed on a second-hand Bandag unit that has been repurposed for the Vulkan Daek operation.
The new Matteuzzi nailhole detector
On Retreading Business’s previous visit to Vulkan Daek in Randers, in Denmark, the weather was overcast, the ground was still frozen from a long cold winter and at the beginning of the recession it wasn’t only the countryside that looked bleak. This time, the visit was on a day with a fresh wind blowing, clear blue skies and the sun warming everything that it touched. It was a complete contrast and it reflected the change in fortunes at Vulkan Daek.
Henrick Nielsen had looked carefully at his business and his business model. He had been forced to make some decisions about where to go. Competition in Denmark had dropped, two other retreaders having folded back in 2008/2009 leaving the domestic market open to just three local retreaders and the products imported from elsewhere.
Vulkan Daek has been operating a Marangoni retread outlet for some years and Ringtread was a growing sector of the production. However, the production and storage facility was tight – so tight that the autoclave had to be specially made to fit the available space. Staff danced around each other to work and the stores were like a Tower of Hanoi where to access one set of tyres the warehouseman had to shift another. Stock control was a precise operation because the confines of space demanded nothing less – but it was
time consuming.
Consideration of the market led Nielsen to the realisation that the only way that Vulkan Daek could remain as a retreader in the Danish market was to offer the best possible quality retreads. So, instead of ceding to the onslaught of cheap imported retreads and Chinese tyres, Nielsen decided to invest in quality. The quality and the volume required to make the business function could not come from the old unit so the funds were arranged and Vulkan Daek took the leap into the future.
Land adjacent to the original site was purchased to give external storage for incoming casings, and land at the other side purchased and a new production and warehouse facility erected. From a small plot occupied by the business his father had built up, Vulkan Daek now occupied 2/3rds of the street it was located on. The administrative offices remain in the old buildings, but everything else has changed. The once cramped production unit is where tyres are stored for drying prior to inspection and the SDS Shearography line. The new production hall is clear, open and spacious. It houses everything that one would expect in a modern retread facility.
However, in the development of the new retread facility Nielsen has invested and is continuing to invest, in quality. Every tyre that comes into
it will pay dividends in terms of quality and customer satisfaction. The next step in the process is via a new Matteuzzi automatic nailhole detector, where nailholes are identified and the casing either repaired or rejected.
And again, for the buffing process
At the end of the line tyres go to the new warehouse where there is ample space for the storage of some 4,300 finished tyres that can be accessed and loaded by fork lift without the need to play a Towers of Hanoi game with every order dispatched.
The investment in plant runs to about
SDS Shearography and PTS in line operation
62 Retreading Business
there has been more investment, this time in a Marangoni Eagle Truck 3000 Dual: A fully automated buffing solution that gives the ideal base for the Ringbuilding process. Past the skiving and filling process, which is as it is in any retread plant, lies the Ringbuilder 3003. This lays the gum on one casing as it builds another, so
750,000 Euro, and the land and the buildings push that investment skywards.
Discussing the development of the business, Nielsen explained, “Our big customers are increasingly concerned about quality and performance. They don’t want the public to see their trucks sitting at the side of the road