Efficiency throughout all processes

Published

Accuracy, consistency, efficiency and flexibility are just some of words that drive the partnership between Dutch-based Royal Lovink Industries and DISA – a partnership that sealed its longevity by a contract signing at GIFA 2015 of the new DISA 270-A vertical moulding line.

Company Profile

Being a world-leader for more than 100 years, Royal Lovink Industries has succeeded in bringing iron casting technology into the 21st century. This 104 year old, family-owned group of industrial companies has served customers worldwide with a wide range of products. This includes cable accessories for low, medium and high voltage electricity networks and cast iron products for a vast variety of industries and sectors. The company, employing 300 dedicated professionals and presenting an annual turnover of 40 million Euro, is headquartered in the Dutch city of Terborg and has a production plant in both the Netherlands and Poland, the latter of which is the company production location for enamelling of castings.

Our Partnership

“The DISA partnership helps us to stay competitive long-term and increase our market share due to continuous implementation and improvement of new technology. By replacing old with new, we succeed in enabling Lovink to perform better and more, thereby expanding our business”, says Dirk Jan van den Hout, co-Owner and Managing Director.

Lovink Technocast is owned 100% by Royal Lovink Industries. The daughter company is equipped with three distinctive foundry processes, namely the DISA technology and moulding lines, the lost foam and the hand moulding, all of which enable the company to serve a wide variety of customers with both high quality and high complexity products.

“We love to challenge our customers, and we have both the experience and the knowledge to do so. As such, we have the possibility to create solutions that solve even the trickiest of problems – not just because of the said experience and knowledge, but definitely also because of our partnership with DISA”, says Alexander van den Hout, co-Owner and Managing Director of Royal Lovink Industries B.V.

Royal Lovink Industries  

Challenges, Solution and Results

Old partnership and new investment

Since the early seventies, Lovink Technocast has been well renowned worldwide to serve the market with exceptional products, produced on DISAMATIC 2070 and 2032, respectively. Most recently, Lovink has taken its next step to stay competitive and improve overall quality and flexibility by investing in a new DISA 270-A.

“With this new investment, our aim is to clearly emphasize our long-term strategy to serve customers in a variety of industries where the required flexibility, lead-time and quality are ever increasing factors. The improved accuracy of the new DISA 270-A will not only improve the quality of our products; being equipped with a fast and fully automatic pattern plate changer, it will also enable us to enhance flexibility and time-to-market. We feel convinced that the more efficient production processes based on a higher quantity of moulds per hour as well as the improved accuracy will help us stay competitive in the very high demanding markets in which we operate”, states Alexander van den Hout.

Higher performance and lower costs per casting

By focusing on the relation between world-class design and state-of-the-art process equipment, Lovink has proved this exact combination to be the competitive edge that makes all the difference in the market place:

“We strive to constantly evolve and innovate in a way that will allow our vast performance improvements to bring just as vast benefits to our customers. Having decided to replace the DISAMATIC 2070 moulding line with the latest technology of the DISA 270-A, we expect to achieve performance improvements that include faster production in moulds per hour, higher production up time as well as a reduced casting mismatch which remains a major cost driver. Even with our smaller batches, we want to see if we can better alternate our business, and the DISA equipment and technology is what supports our ability to deliver aesthetic perfection to customers throughout the world, such as some of the major appliances brands”, says Dirk Jan van den Hout before co-Owner and Managing Director Alexander van den Hout concludes.

Material and technology as well as people

“The future is all about customer contact and having the right people. The foundry industry has a tendency to continuous target more complex parts, and obviously we also need to alternate our working processes with intelligent systems in future. However, although the challenging parts of staying ahead of the game will include a vast percentage of material and technology, a key element in terms of competitiveness remain our customer partnerships. We not only work with our customers; we engineer with them. And the time-to-market, flexibility and reliability gained through listening to, talking to and interacting with customers is what will allow us to have the valuable process knowledge needed to make all the necessary changes happen”.