For over 85 years, Daramic has led the way in developing new and innovative technology for the lead acid battery market. With headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, Daramic today supplies nearly 50% of the world’s demand for high performance polyethylene battery separators to the lead acid battery industry. Daramic Thailand operates the largest and most advanced polyethylene separator manufacturing plant in Asia, located in Prachinburi.

I am Sunny, Customer Service Manager of Siveco China, having the great pleasure to write this month’s editorial! At the end of May, I attended the annual technology conference held by Siveco Group, representing the Asia region. During the seminar, I shared my experience and our regional strategies with other countries’ colleagues.

Long before the term IoT was coined, Siveco’s maintenance management systems were already making use of data from sensors, supervisions and control systems, to enable predictive maintenance and better management decisions. The technologies developed by Siveco have proven particularly agile to benefit from today’s IoT advances, increasingly connected machines and new cloud-based services. Today, the bluebee® lab, located in Shanghai, is at the forefront of IoT applications for Maintenance 4.0.

For us at Siveco, the second quarter of the year is always the time to share experience with other Siveco companies worldwide. Thanks to the network structure of our group, experience flows from everywhere, not only top-down. China’s very dynamic market allows Siveco China to be at the forefront of Maintenance 4.0 innovation, while drawing on decades of best practices in mature markets, which in turn benefit from our innovations.

The term “Made in China” makes one think of increasing local competition. As far as our business is concerned, it more likely means potential partners. Moreover, I would say we welcome more competitors in this high-potential market… where we sometimes feel a bit lonely! At the same time, our local content is very high, which is one of our strengths: our Shanghai R&D center, dedicated to mobility and “4.0” solutions, was setup in 2008.

After the factory was setup, the priority was naturally to ramp up production, not to optimize maintenance. The company’s management team was however well aware of the importance of maintenance and initiated discussions with Siveco as early as 2014 during the startup phase. The topic gradually gained traction and became a priority at the end of 2015, with a clear need to improve maintenance efficiency and to keep costs under control.