In mid-October this year, ZAMA took part in the Equip Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky. ZAMA has been a regular exhibitor at the show since 2018, and this year is no exception.
Our ZAMA team is widely respected for our extensive history manufacturing carburetors and precision parts, but this year we presented some different and exciting new products (seen below.) At our ZAMA booth, you could see on display our new wire harnesses, small PCBA, and textiles, as well as our longstanding products. Our goal is to gain recognition as more than a carb/fuel systems manufacture and diversify our products to supply more for our OEM customers. We are accomplishing this by applying the decades of quality and precision experience gained from our carburetor, oil-pump and precision machined parts manufacturing expertise.
Showing off our new products was not the only thing we did at this year’s Equip Exposition. The Young Leader Event (YLE), hosted by members of ZAMA from across the globe, met the same week of the expo. The YLE is a talent program initiated by ZAMA, which started in 2018. The intention of the program is to choose talented employees from each ZAMA location and provide them with opportunities for training, communication, collaboration and self-development.
The young leaders of ZAMA came from different countries and grew up in different cultural backgrounds. Their attendance and involvement at the Equip Exposition will help to support the ZAMA Group as we continue to grow in new business areas.
On October 20-22, 2021, ZAMA once again participated in one of the largest trade shows for the outdoor power equipment industry-GIE EXPO located in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, last year’s GIE EXPO was forced to cancel, and ZAMA also canceled most of its offline business activities out of consideration for the health of its employees. Therefore, this year’s GIE EXPO is a great opportunity for ZAMA to meet face to face with customers, distributors, dealers and colleagues again after two years.
At this year’s GIE EXPO, in addition to carburetor, oil pump and precision machined parts, ZAMA also exhibited electronic fuel injectors, wiring harness and cable assemblies, etc., to provide OEM customers with more complete electronic & mechanical solutions. At the same time, ZAMA had very meaningful discussions and communications on product and technical issues with distributors and dealers for aftermarket at the exhibition.
Here, we would like to express our sincere thanks to all the visitors who came to visit the ZAMA booth during the exhibition. This year ZAMA again provided visitors with the opportunity to register for a lucky draw. The following is the list of winners.
ZAMA Corporation and the Elrad International Group have established a joint venture for the manufacture of electronic assemblies. The two companies signed a joint venture agreement which was subsequently officially approved by the relevant antitrust authorities. The joint venture will operate under the name ZE Electronic Manufacturing Service Ltd. ZAMA holds 51 percent of the shares, the remaining 49 percent are held by Elrad. The companies have agreed not to disclose financial details of the transaction.
With the increase of people’s environmental awareness around the world, the demand for battery-powered outdoor tools is increasing significantly. In recent years, apart from continuing to provide global customers with diaphragm carburetors and precision machining parts, ZAMA has also gradually accumulated know-how in development and manufacturing of electronic parts. In 2013, ZAMA launched solenoid valve products, and ZAMA will start mass production of cables harness in April this year.
At the same time, Elrad has extensive experience in the field of electronic electromechanical assemblies, providing products and services to customers in different industries around the world. This time ZAMA and Elrad have established the joint venture to maximize their expertise and experience advantages and provide customers with more value-added electronic products and services. The new company is scheduled to start operations at ZAMA’s Philippine production site in Santo Tomas in Batangas province at the end of 2021. In the medium term this will lead to the creation of more than 175 new jobs.
About ZAMA Corporation
ZAMA Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the STIHL Group and the world’s largest manufacturer of diaphragm carburetors. To date, the ZAMA Group includes sites in Japan, Hong Kong, China, the Philippines and the U.S. The company supplies carburetors, oil pumps and other precision parts to various manufacturers of chainsaws and garden tools. With a workforce comprising more than 2,400 employees, ZAMA annually manufactures more than 15 million carburetors in some 350 different variants, 6 million oil pumps and high precision machining parts.
About Elrad International
Elrad Group has more than twenty years of experience as a supplier in the development and production of electronic and electromechanical assemblies for various industries. As a system supplier, Elrad Group is involved in several or all stages of the development process for electronic assemblies on behalf of its customers. The goal is mass production of these assemblies or fully assembled products. The company employs more than 1,800 people at four locations worldwide (among others in Slovenia).
We have heard about the detection of a new corona virus in the beginning of this year, but we did not anticipate that the virus will spread from Wuhan, affecting people all over China and even the whole world. By February 26, 2020, there are 78,190 people in China are infected by the new corona virus, of which 65,187 are from Hubei province (1.1 infection cases per thousand citizens), while Guangdong (where ZAMA factory is located) is the second most infected province in China after Hubei, with 1,347 infection cases / 11.92 infection cases per million citizens reported (62 of them in Huizhou, which equals 13 cases per million citizens). The good news is, as of today ZAMA has no single employee, who is sick with corona virus.
The virus spread very fast in late January because of the Spring Festival travel rush (also known as “the largest annual human migration in the world “). Chinese government extended the Spring Festival holiday this year to avoid cross infection among people on return trip.
As a company with a high sense of social responsibility, ZAMA always puts the health and safety of its employees first. Since the outbreak, ZAMA management has attached great attention to the development of the virus, and established a special working team for the prevention and control of the virus at ZAMA plant. In order to ensure health and safety of ZAMA employees, the working team did a lot of preparations before work resumption, such as
- Ø Collecting travel information and physical condition of each ZAMA employee;
- Ø Publishing online training materials and test against the virus (all employees have to 100% pass the online tests before returning to work);
- Ø Arranging dormitories and shuttle buses for production workers;
- Ø Preparing protective materials such as masks and disinfectants;
- Ø Sterilizing the plant including workshops, offices, canteens and other areas;
- Ø Communicating with local government on epidemic management plans, etc.
The outbreak of virus caused shortages of protective materials in China. It took a lot of efforts for the working team to purchase enough protective materials for work resumption. And we have to thank colleagues of other ZAMA locations and STIHL purchasing for their supports during the procurement process.
On February 15, with the approval of local government, ZAMA organized the first batch of 200+ workers return to work. ZAMA adopted the strictest virus-prevention management system to avoid infection of ZAMA employees. The company arranges at least 3 times body temperature measurement for all workers every day. Not only ZAMA employees, all visitors also need to have their body temperature measured before entering ZAMA plant. ZAMA provides new masks for all employees every working day, and the employees have to wear masks the whole time during commuting and working. The facilities in ZAMA plant are disinfected at a daily base.
Besides from that, ZAMA implemented special measures for staff canteen. The canteen only provides boxed meal during the special period, and all staffs need to order their foods one day in advance, space between each seat is increased to one meter and all seats are separated by baffles, dining time is strictly controlled by group and disinfections are applied before and after each meal.
For office workers, ZAMA extended home office since February 10 to avoid infection risks during commute. Flexibility is a big benefit for home office, while consistency and communication sometimes may be challenging for people work from home. Due to bad internet connection, “Can you hear me?” and “I could not hear you well, can you please repeat that again?” are the most frequently asked questions during video conferences I have participated. Fortunately, as the situation in China is getting better, office workers can also get back to work from this week (CW9). By February 26, there are 750 production and office workers in ZAMA Huizhou have resumed work.
Zama Group would like to congratulate our winners from the 2019 GIE+ EXPO.
Brandon Epple
Mike Ciecko
Ed Staveckas
Gary Rastelli
Mike Stevens
Kent Littlefield
Thank you to everyone who visited our booth and we look forward to attending for 2020.
We are participating the GIE +EXPO 2019 together with our business partner Prüfrex. Besides from carburetors and oil pumps which are well-known among our customers, our new precision components such as shafts, gears, high pressure pumps, solenoid valves will also be displayed at the exhibition. And we will present our electronic fuel injection system for selected customers (by prior appointment only).
We are looking forward to meeting with you at our booth in October.
On January 17th. 2018, ZAMA held the opening ceremony for its new production facility in Huizhou, China. The ceremony was attended by more than 150 guests from government, customers, suppliers, business partners and project teams. To name some of them, the Vice Mayor of Huiyang Mr. Chen Dangsheng, the Director General of Bureau of Commerce of Huiyang Mrs. Zhang Yanqiong, the Mayor of Shatian Mr. Feng Yirui, the Acting Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Guangzhou Mr. Dirk Lechelt, and the General Manager of German Chamber of Commerce in China・South & Southwest Mr. Jens Hildebrandt appeared at the ceremony. Dr. Nikolas Stihl and Ms. Selina Stihl from Stihl family and Dr. Bertram Kandziora, Dr. Michael Prochaska and Mr. Wolfgang Zahn from Stihl board attended the ceremony. Aside from so many Stihl attention, also ZAMA’ s other customers, such as the Senior VP Purchasing Mr. Göran Ruden from Husqvarna, CEO Mr. Yoshiaki Nagao from Yamabiko, and founder and owner Mr. Robert Yang of Painier joined the celebration.
The ceremony started with an emotional opening remark from Mr. Jan Grigor Schubert, the President of ZAMA Group: “(The new plant is) the most modern and most environmental friendly factory in the carburetor industry worldwide”, followed by a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a traditional Chinese dragon dance. The new facility covers a land area of 20,000 square meters with a built-up area of 31,484 square meters and will create 1,900 jobs, many of them to the employees of the old factory of ZAMA in Shenzhen. ZAMA introduced a state-of-the-art waste water treatment system and realized the idea of “a zero industrial waste water discharge plant”. The new plant is expected to produce 9 million carburetors and 4 million oil pumps for its customers in 2018. “the opening of the ZAMA Huizhou facility as an integral part of our international production network marks another milestone in the history of ZAMA and STIHL” said Dr. Nikolas Stihl at the ceremony.
In the evening, together with more than 2,100 employees from ZAMA Shenzhen, Huizhou and Hong Kong, the guests were entertained with delicious Chinese cuisines as well as elaborate performances prepared by ZAMA employees and local artists.
In order to ensure safe and uninterrupted deliveries to its existing customers, explore the vast Chinese market for further expansion, and above all, to retain the experienced Chinese employees, ZAMA decided to build its own plant in China after the rental contract for current China plant ends in 2018.
ZAMA acquired a 20,000 m2 plot of land in the town of Shatian in the municipality of Huizhou, Guangdong. The total built-up usable area of the new facility will be 31,484 m2 comprising one independent die-casting building, one block of 3-storey production building and one block of 4-storey administrative & support building.
Together with German construction experts, ZAMA selected the project partners who are the most advanced in China and have plenty of experiences in planning, designing and building manufacturing plants. Many state-of-the-art architectural façade and technologies will be introduced to bring ZAMA a beautiful, modern, environmental friendly factory.
ZAMA held a grand groundbreaking ceremony for the new China factory in Huizhou on 18th May 2016. Many famous personalities and VIPs both from the government and private sectors presented during the groundbreaking ceremony. The construction is proceeding fast since then. The foundation has been completed at the end of September 2016 and the construction company is working on the main structure of the factory buildings. The construction is expected to be finished by June 2017.
After 2 months for quality examination and approval of the buildings, ZAMA will start to move the first die-casting machine into the new factory in August 2017. All machines and employees will be moved workshop by workshop and the moving project will be completed by end of June 2018. To guarantee quality from the start, release procedures agreed by respective customers will be applied systematically.
Huizhou plant will be one of the 2 main manufacturing facilities of ZAMA Group with a capacity of 10 million carburetors, 7 million oil pumps and other precision parts.
ZAMA celebrated the inauguration of the new production plant in Santo Tomas in the Philippines on January 20, 2016. Special guests like the honorable Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry Adrian S. Cristobal Jr., PEZA Director General Dr. Lilia B. De Lima and the President of the German-Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry Dr. Bodo Goerlich participated in this grand event. ZAMA customers STIHL, Yamabiko and Husqvarna represented by Dr. Nikolas Stihl and Dr. Bertram Kandziora, Mr. Yoshiaki Nagao and Mr. Patrik Bergman attended the celebration as well. Also present during the inauguration were the members of the Chinese project team who were significantly responsible for the success of this project.
Speaking at the ceremony, ZAMA Group President Mr. Jan Grigor Schubert emphasized the strategic significance of the new factory: “We decided for an additional location, considering the need of our customers for safe and uninterrupted deliveries which would be at risk, when sourcing from one location only”
The new facility in Santo Tomas covers a total land area of almost 60,000 square meters and offers about 22,000 square meters of production, warehouse and office floor space. Series production is due to start in April 2016. The new factory is to produce about 2 million carburetors in 2016 with a workforce of some 650 men and women.
With regard to die-casting machines technical specification, we can classify the die-casting machine into three different generations. The first generation of die-casting machines originated in the early 19th century. Its typical technical feature is manual injection, and is used for moveable type of printer production. The second generation of die-casting machines came out in the middle of 20th century. The typical technical feature is full automation hydraulic injection, and developed with single injection phase and multiplied injection phase. This generation of die-casting machines are used for low quality die-casting product production. The third generation of die-casting machines generated in the end 20th century. The typical technical feature is digital control system, and is used for high quality vehicle die-casting product production.
At the end of 2014, ZAMA SZ plant introduced two new die-casting machines with a digital control system. This new generation machine is not only equipped with digital technology, but also equipped with an intelligent quality online monitoring system. This means all the process parameters can be set digitally, and the system can display the real figures with curves. We can set the upper and lower limit value for the key process parameter, which influences the product quality significantly. If the real figures is out of limit specification, then an alarm will be set off to detect the defect.
With this new machine, the process data can be reserved once we obtain the good parts after adjusting the machine. The process data reserved can be used for the next lot production to produce good parts quickly. In the past five months of this new generation machine being in production, the reduction of average defect rate for some trouble-shooting product with a high defect rate is about 60 percent. At the same time, we saved a lot of change overtime. The intelligent digital control system is so simple that it can be used by a novice, whereas the traditional second generation of die-casting machines depended on the experience level of process technicians. Technicians always need to spend lots of time to try different process parameters to obtain the best parts and fix the process parameters by trying out the good parts.For almost each changeover, our process technicians need to adjust the process parameters. We always had the case where the second generation of die-casting machines produced the same product on the same die casting machine. In addition, we would produce the same product on a different die-casting machine but for a different batch. The defect rate is definitely different even if the process parameter is the same. Now the experience level of process technician is not so critical by using the third generation of digital control die-casting machine to produce good parts.
When the new generation of die-casting machine was introduced at ZAMA, the top management team and the experts from headquarters in Germany discussed how to improve the work conditions and work load; how to increase the machine‘s efficiency and lifespan; how to save energy and reduce waste; and how to reduce the risk of mechanical fires. For improving the work condition and work load, we moved to an oil pad to replace the traditional waste water ditch to collect the waste water. All the industrial pipelines are now installed above the ground instead of hiding under the ground to detect the leakage earlier and maintain the machine easier. The floor has been painted with bright color to enhance operator’s 5S concept. A single track crane replaced the double track crane to reduce the workload of die-mold changeover. In order to increase the machine‘s efficiency and lifespan, we invited machine manufacturers to train our operators on how to operate and maintain correctly. Now the daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance will be well done by the maintenance team. The two new machines were designed and installed with mirror concept instead of the normal installation concept to acquire maximum maintenance access. Because of this, there is no maintenance blind side. In order to save energy and reduce water waste, the new installation concept of one holding oven for two machines replace the traditional installation concept of one holding oven for one machine. By using heat resistant cooling pipes to improve the leakage problem, the statistical data indicated that 15 percent electricity energy was saved for the new machine and oven system and 70 percent water waste was saved for the new cooling system. For fire risks, the power hydraulic system and die release lube system of the new machine was designed by using non-flame hydraulic oil and non-flame die release lube. The melt material feeding location of the new holding oven is designed with new concept of keeping in the faraway location between the operators.