Yuetong Company is a Chinese high-tech enterprise specialising in automated wooden door production equipment. An award-winning and patent-heavy enterprise, it has tied up with Pune-based Aadhunik Woodworking Machinery (AWM) as its distributor in India. WoodNews caught up with Neo, General Manager-Sales at Yeutong, and Praveen Dhore, CEO of AWM, to gauge the domestic market. Excerpts:

Yeutong’s door leaf production lines can be scaled for mass production.

Hello Neo! What are the company’s R&D achievements and patents? What is its production infrastructure?

Yuetong is the most technologically advanced and largest-scale enterprise among China’s special equipment manufacturers for wooden doors. It is a national ‘Little Giant’ enterprise and a ‘National Intelligent Manufacturing System Solution Provider’ recognized by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Yuetong has drafted or participated in drafting all industry standards for wooden door automation equipment, participated in key forestry R&D projects in China and has established three provincial engineering technology research centers, with graduate and post-doctoral projects.

It holds 51 national invention patents, including five foreign patents, and 35 embedded control software copyrights.

Yuetong’s factory covers an area of over 1,00,000 square metres, with a workshop of nearly 40,000 square metres, including processes such as welding, heat treatment, surface treatment, painting, processing, and assembly.

It is equipped with seven large gantry automated processing centers, nearly 50 small and medium-sized automated processing centers, fully automatic heat treatment equipment, and a fully automatic spraying production line.

With a complete ERP and MES system, it has realised a high integration of processing automation and management informatization.

What is the range of door manufacturing solutions available with Yuetong?

Yuetong can provide automated manufacturing solutions for door leaves, door casings, moldings and other components of various door types, including laminated wooden doors, assembled wooden doors, and aluminum-edged wooden doors.

These solutions include unmanned flexible production lines, automated units, and automatic single machines. The processing cycle of the production lines and single machines can be selected from 90 seconds to 30 seconds.

What are the markets in which Yuetong operates? How is after-sales service ensured in these countries?

Yuetong’s business covers multiple markets in China, the Middle East, North America, Europe and South-East Asia: 50 countries in all. Most of the after-sales services are provided by local agent companies. Yuetong provides technical support and will also send engineers to customers’ factories when necessary.

Why the need for advanced technology in the evolution of door production?

Automation and robotics play two main roles in manufacturing. Automated equipment and robots can work continuously 24 hours a day without fatigue. They can also quickly switch production tasks according to preset programs.

Automation and robotics feature a high level of precision and consistency, which can accurately control production process parameters and reduce fluctuations in product quality.

Compared with ordinary furniture, wooden doors are larger in volume, heavier in weight, involve more production processes, have complex craftsmanship, and are not very convenient to handle.

The use of automated production lines or equipment can greatly reduce the reliance on the skills of production workers and the inconvenience caused by the transfer between multiple processes.

Hello Praveen! What is your assessment of the current scenario and potential of the doors and door-frame market in India?

Currently the situation for doors industry is really good. Some official reports peg the growth for the construction industry at 12.5% annually till the year 2033. This is really exciting!

Apart from that, government infrastructure projects, new airports and urbanization are giving additional boost to foreign direct investments in the construction sector.

These days, the trend is to provide complete door solutions which includes the door leaf, frames and installation services at site. Therefore, many door manufacturing companies are looking to upgrade their production facilities to meet demands. I see that in the next 5-7 years there will be a lot of investment in door manufacturing – new factories or capacity expansion.

What are the main challenges faced by domestic door manufacturers? What are the possible solutions?

Manufacturers face challenges in terms of raw material, pricing, skilled labour and manufacturing to industrial scale. At the same time in India, we have more customization. Now, with BIS norms coming into effect, some of these challenges the industry will be able to overcome.

So far as mass production of doors is concerned, we (Yeutong and AWM) are ready to support the market with manufacturing lines at affordable prices, which will help manufacturers to reach returns on investment fast.

Who are the leading door manufacturing companies in India? Who among them are Yuetong’s clients?

There are many leading door manufacturers in India, among them are Century, Greenlam, Kalpataru, Dormak, Micasa, Shakti Harmon, Durian, Rajdhani, Shreejee, Encore and Ravela. A few of them are already using Yeutong machines; some are discussing expansion; and a few new business houses are coming up with door manufacturing units.

What machines from Yuetong are available in India through AWM?

We have already supplied 45-degree cutting, lock hinges milling machines and architrave making machines. A few new machines are on their way to our new customers in India.

What about maintenance, repairs and trouble-shooting for these clients?

Aadhunik has trained service engineers. From our base in Pune we will be adding our service support in North, South and West India soon. Our engineers are trained at our partner’s (Yeotung) factory. At the same time the Yeutong team is always there to support our team online. We are well equipped to provide after-sales support to customers.

What is Yuetong’s USP in the Indian market?

The need of the industry is automation, mass production and manufacturing supported by software. Yuetong can offer customised lines in a very short period.

With Yuetong machines we can minimise cycle time for each operation/ process; hence higher productivity with less manpower at affordable cost – and that is what Indian door manufacturers need.

Use of artificial intelligence in manufacturing process is not far away, and Yuetong is ready for that. We (Yeutong and AWM) are one-stop solution providers for the doors industry with surface finishing lines and wrapping solutions with us.

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