In the profile processing industry, the selection of equipment is crucial to production efficiency, product quality, etc. Many companies often ignore some key factors when purchasing equipment, resulting in unsatisfactory returns on investment and even production stagnation. Understanding and avoiding these misunderstandings can help companies make more informed decisions and improve overall competitiveness. This article will analyze several major misunderstandings in the purchase of equipment in the profile processing industry to help industry practitioners avoid risks and improve production efficiency.
- Competing for low prices
When “competing for low prices” becomes the norm in the industry, an abnormal economic form of “bad money drives out good money” will be formed. When counterfeiting, shoddy work, and cutting corners become the mainstream, the survival space of companies that insist on scientific research and innovation, quality first, and honest management is compressed. In the long run, the industry will no longer be able to buy equipment that meets the requirements, which will inevitably restrict the healthy development of the profile processing equipment industry!
Enterprises are not scientific research units, and enterprises need to be profitable. So some people say: making friends does not make money. It’s just a marketing slogan. How can you start a company for profit? If it’s not for profit, why not do charity directly?
There is a common idea in China: think that low-profit enterprises are conscientious enterprises, and think that others don’t make money from you is really beneficial, which is obviously not in line with economic laws. Without profit support, how can enterprises survive? Where can products be upgraded? Where can after-sales guarantee be provided?
- Pay too much attention to equipment prices and ignore long-term costs
When purchasing profile processing equipment, many companies often look at the initial purchase price of the equipment first, which seems to be the most intuitive and easiest to measure standard. The total cost of ownership (TCO) of the equipment is the core factor that enterprises need to pay attention to in the long-term production process. The total cost of ownership includes not only the purchase cost of the equipment itself, but also the maintenance cost, energy consumption cost, parts replacement cost, production efficiency and other factors of the equipment.
For example, a relatively low-priced equipment may need to invest more money in energy consumption and maintenance, resulting in its long-term operating cost being much higher than that of high-priced equipment. According to industry data, energy-saving equipment can reduce energy expenditure by about 10% per year compared with traditional equipment, which has an unignorable impact on the long-term profitability of enterprises.
- Blind pursuit of high configuration
The configuration of equipment often has two sides, and blindly pursuing high configuration is a taboo in purchasing equipment. In theory, the failure rate of mechanical design is often proportional to the configuration level. Each design, each node, and each accessory has a potential failure rate. The more components, the higher the probability of problems. At the same time, each design, node, and accessory also means a certain cost investment. The more configurations are selected, the higher the overall quotation of the equipment will naturally be, and the cost of maintenance, maintenance and use will increase accordingly. Excessive or infrequently used configurations are considered consumption rather than investment in enterprise management.
It is a rational purchasing strategy to clarify one’s actual needs and always use the final use effect of the equipment as the purchase standard. Many companies often make such decisions during the purchase and use of equipment: when purchasing, they strive to be comprehensive and expect a production line to meet all production needs. However, in the subsequent maintenance and upkeep phase, maintenance personnel often remove those configurations that are not frequently used in order to simply or quickly resume production. This cycle of adding and removing leads to a huge waste of resources. For equipment, the most suitable configuration is the best choice.
- Ignoring equipment technical support and after-sales service
The technical support and after-sales service of equipment are crucial to the profile processing industry. Equipment failure and downtime may cause the production line to stagnate, which in turn affects the production plan and delivery cycle of the entire enterprise. Therefore, it is very important to choose equipment manufacturers with reliable technical support and after-sales service. When purchasing equipment, many companies pay too much attention to the performance of the equipment itself and ignore the guarantee of the service system, resulting in problems encountered in the later use process. The system cannot be solved in time, which seriously affects production efficiency.
According to industry surveys, more than 80% of companies stated that the quality of after-sales service directly affects the production cycle and service life of the equipment. It is recommended that when purchasing equipment, you should carefully understand the manufacturer’s service commitment, maintenance response time, and accessories supply, etc., to ensure that the equipment can receive timely technical support and maintenance guarantees.
- Ignore the matching between employee training and equipment operation
Although the advancedness and automation of equipment can greatly improve production efficiency, too high a degree of automation may also cause difficulties in the operation of enterprises, especially when the technical level of employees is not high. For some enterprises, before purchasing high-end automation equipment, they must ensure that employees can master the operation of the equipment and perform daily maintenance and troubleshooting.
The operating interface of the equipment, the friendliness of the control system, the simplicity of process parameter setting, etc. are also factors to be considered when selecting equipment. If the operation of the equipment is too complicated, employees need a lot of training to operate it proficiently, which not only increases the training cost of the enterprise, but also may cause a decrease in production efficiency in the early stage of equipment investment.
