What is the connection between Internet 4.0, a factory, IKEA and millions of plates? The answer is automated: Cristian Covaciu and IPEC, a company with business of almost 100 million lei last year and 70% of production delivered to IKEA.

He can talk for hours about the complicated mechanisms of robots, about every washer, but also about every process that could be improved in their work. “I remember the main details of a car, even if I see it for the first time”, confesses Cristian Covaciu (50 years old), who, at the end of 1990, laid the foundation stone of the Elena Covaciu Porcelain Enterprise (IPEC), next to by brother and their mother – still active in the company today, despite her 75 years.

Started in the garage of a house following an investment of 100 marks, IPEC defined itself at the time as a porcelain manufacture. Over time, the demands of the market dictated, and the enterprise took the path of fine household tiles. “We still have the original porcelain recipes that we wrote 20 years ago and we also have new developments such as premium porcelain – a new product that is being developed for the hotel industry,” explains the entrepreneur.

ROBOTS. He has 700 employees and 250 robots under his command, and what should have been a discussion about ceramics quickly turns into a complex of explanations related to interconnected machines. “I am very confident about the future of human-robot collaboration. I try to explain this to everyone.” Since 2000, the process of robotization has begun, but the entrepreneur points out, whenever he has the opportunity, that more robots do not mean layoffs. It’s reminiscent of the early years of the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century, when people feared that their jobs would be taken by machines. “And did such a thing happen? Of course not!”

However, since 2000 the number of its employees has decreased by 25% from a maximum of 950, part of this decrease is also due to the wave of emigration that was felt more strongly in Romania after 2007. “If we had where, we still hire 50 people today”, says Covaciu bluntly.

On the other hand, they hope that, by 2020, production will be fully robotic. “You can’t ask a man to make car moves. You can’t ask him to do the same movement 2,000 times a day with the same precision”, points out the entrepreneur.

That’s why he sees people rather in the part of supervising the process, of thinking, where “it is categorically smarter than a machine”. In fact, this way waste can also be reduced. At final sorting, in an average company, the rate of good products is 85-90%. By 2020, however, IPEC wants the incidence of defective products to be one in one million. He also has a plan for this, also in the area of robotization – a learning machine program, that is, a control software through which he aims to change the way robots are programmed, so that they end up detect product defects by themselves, without referring to a prior database.

“This is industry 4.0 and machine learning. The simple operations are already working, we are working on the more complicated ones”, says the entrepreneur. It already plans to inaugurate another module this year, stating that it would not require a new factory, but the doubling of capacity in one of the halls, which would increase business for this year and next year by about 25% In the most pessimistic version, it would need about a hundred people and almost as many robots.

THE YEAR THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING. In 1996, IKEA entered the company’s life. This is, in fact, the moment when IPEC makes the transition from a company that produced in small quantities for the domestic market to one that is oriented towards series production intended mainly for exports. Today, the domestic market represents only one percent, 70% of the production goes to IKEA, and the rest to other European markets such as Spain, Italy, Germany, but also in Russia or Ukraine.

At the level of Romania, IPEC products are sold through the Dedeman, IKEA networks and, in a future moment, at Metro. The national market no longer suits them, because they produce very large series. He also does a quick calculation: a mold costs between 10,000 and 30,000 euros, and three are needed to develop a series. Thus, the weight of the mold in the final price is very high in the situation where the orders are small. In addition, the switching time of automated lines is relatively long. “We are probably among the best in the world at large and very large series, and when it comes to short series we are not competitive, and then the smaller companies win,” he argues.

The heavy reliance on orders from IKEA seems to make him somewhat vulnerable. However, robotization comes to his aid again. Through this process, the efficiency of production increases, and costs can be reduced to the maximum, especially since the factory works 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Moreover, he states that, at present, the total orders would represent double the current production capacity of the company (40 million plates annually), and to be able to honor them, he would need four more factories in addition to the six that he has by you.

PORCELAIN FIGURES. The production of fine household ceramics fell from 112 million pieces in 2004, a volume that represented the peak of the last almost 15 years, to 82.3 million pieces in 2015, according to data of the National Institute of Statistics. In 2015, production amounted to 304 million RON (68.4 million euros).

On the other hand, tableware exports, which also include other household items and other hygiene or toilet items, amounted in 2015 to almost 69 million euros, compared to imports of almost 15 million euro at the level of the same year, according to INS data.

Practically, the Romanian market is dominated by imports, despite the fact that there are still few players. The main tableware producers in Romania are Apulum Alba Iulia (porcelain tableware), IPEC (fine household stoneware) and Cesiro from Sighișoara (household tiles).

Globally, the market (which includes tableware, glasses and cutlery) is expected to reach $41 billion by 2020, driven by favorable economic and demographic factors, increasing appetite for dining with family and friends, but also changing trends, which generates new and new orders, data from the research and analysis company Global Industry Analysts shows.

At the same time, the increase in the number of restaurants and hotels brought with it a greater demand for household accessories. Although Europe still remains the largest market for this type of product, the Asia-Pacific region has the highest growth.

Cristian Covaciu says that there is not much direct competition in the country, especially since the three main producers have different products, and then they do not address the same type of customer. But he also adds: “We are a bit (competitors, n.r.) because the man at home eats from his plate and does not really care what material it is made of”.

They have also done their homework and created their own quality system, through which they check and monitor every step of the production process. He also dreams of a factory outside the borders, “in Europe or elsewhere”, but sees this as possible after 2020, when robotization would be even more advanced, and he would only do a copy/paste of the factory in Romania.

They also had offers to take over, but he hopes that at least one of his two daughters will follow in his footsteps and take over the management of the company, and he and his wife, in ten years from now, will be able to tour the world in an off-road car.

If such an option will be put on their plate.

Source: New Money