The KHS factory in Ahmedabad has four production shops and an administrative building on a site measuring 110,000 m2.

KHS production site in India

Certified energy management

At the beginning of 2014 all German KHS plants were certified according to ISO 50001, the standard for energy management valid worldwide. One of KHS’ six production sites outside Ger­many, namely the factory in Ahmedabad, India, has now also received the coveted certificate. An energy management system according to ISO 50001 involves making all energy flows within a company transparent, pinpointing where there are potential cost savings and improving energy use, consumption, and efficiency, among other criteria. The aim is to ultimately reduce CO₂ emissions by optimizing processes.

“Even if our plant in India is not exactly energy intensive, every further measure implemented to save energy generally improves discipline in the responsible handling of limited resources,” says Parimal Patel, senior manager of Quality Assurance & Manufacturing Excellence at KHS Machinery Pvt. Ltd. He hopes to be able to cut energy consumption at his production site by a total of 10% with the help of the certified energy management system and by monitoring the company’s key energy figures.

Rolf Staab, head of the KHS Central Human Resources Division

Ranked by FOCUS special

Top employer

According to a 2016 best employers special in “FOCUS” magazine the KHS Group is one of the top five employers among Germany’s machine and system manufacturers. The systems supplier is thus in good company as the top five include such big names as Robert Bosch and Trumpf. In the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia KHS is even voted best in its sector.

Where a company stands in the ratings is determined by how willing its own employees are to recommend their company to others and by the company’s popularity among employees in the relevant industry. During the assessment process the results of an independent survey by an online panel and among members of the XING business network and employee appraisals on the Internet are taken into account.Rolf Staab, head of the Central Human Resources Division, interprets the rating as a sign of the high level of employee satisfaction at KHS. “We work for a good corporate culture every single day and give our employees many ways of making a contribution to KHS, helping them to further develop and feel at ease here.”

For example, as part of its HR strategy the Dortmund company attaches great importance to creating a climate which encourages innovation, the aim of which is to give employees scope. Certain groups of employees, for instance, are able to use 10% of their work time to develop their own ideas. Inventor compensation and premiums act as additional incentives, as do an internal crowdsourcing system and KHS campus, a further training program for KHS employees.

 

Best industrial printing system

Another award for Direct Print Powered by KHS™

Drupa, which takes place in Düsseldorf every four years, is visited by over 350,000 professionals in the printing and print media industries. Based on nominations by renowned trade journalists, the EDP (European Digital Press Association) takes this opportunity to present awards to the pioneering innovations in the printing industry. This year Direct Print Powered by KHS™ won the coveted prize for the best industrial printing system.

Phil Johnson, head of NMP Systems GmbH who markets this system, says, “We’re especially pleased to receive this award as the system has been specially developed for the world of filling and packaging.”

Direct Print Powered by KHS™ is the first industrial-scale printing system with low-migration, LED UV-curing inks for the food-safe dressing of PET bottles which is capable of printing variable, high-quality images on every bottle on filling and packaging lines at outputs of 12,000, 24,000 or 36,000 bottles per hour. The cloud-based Direct Print software platform enables beverage producers to change graphics and decorations within minutes instead of weeks, presenting a completely new way of linking customers in to an increasingly digital world. In time Direct Print technology will probably fully replace the label and in doing so reduce the consumption of materials, the carbon footprint, and the number of time-consuming changeovers on much more flexible filling and packaging lines.

Find out more at
innovation@nmp-systems.com

Yangon – what we usually call Rangoon – is the official name of the capital of Myanmar, formerly Burma.

KHS Asia has its own office in Myanmar

Awakening from a deep slumber

Until very recently Myanmar was a blank on the KHS map. Ruled by a military government until 2011, the country only started to become interesting to Dortmund after political liberalization and the successive lift of international economic sanctions. A market is now opening up here which has great potential, marked by an immense backlog both in its economic development and private consumption.

After installing a larger filling system in Myanmar with Coca-Cola, at the end of May KHS took the logical next step and opened an office in the metropolis of Yangon, home to 5.2 million people. With an initial team of five local employees, three of whom are service engineers, KHS is looking forward to building up business from its new location. “After a deep slumber lasting several decades demand is exploding in all directions,” explains Volker Geng, managing director of KHS Asia in Singapore and the man also responsible for the new service point. “The demand for beer, soft drinks, water and other bevera­ges such as juices and milk is growing fast and there’s a big interest in lines for all container segments.” With its new infrastructure KHS Asia feels it is well able to cope with the boom in business. The KHS offices in Yangon will probably also grow in parallel with this boom – especially in service, as Geng predicts.

This great success is especially astonishing as Japanese businesses are usually thought to adopt an extremely conservative attitude towards imported technology. “One important criterion in our partnership is undoubtedly the aspect of continuity,” states Matthias Gernhuber, who as head of Sales East/Product Support at KHS Corpoplast in Hamburg has taken care of this particular customer since 2011. “Also on a personal level: in the 40 years of our business relationship there have been just three contacts for MTS to date, including me.”