QINGDAO, China—Mesnac has inaugurated a new smart factory experience center at its site in Qingdao.
The facility is designed to showcase Mesnac's machinery portfolio and processes,which the company claims can cover 80 percent of the requirements of typical tire plant.
Officially opened Sept. 17, the center has research and testing units for new or customized machinery. Virtual reality capabilities at the facility allow engineers to inspect a machine before it's built and conduct trial runs before installing it in tire plants.
At the opening, Mesnac officials also highlighted the company's ambitions in new market areas and in technologies, such as liquid mixing.
"The experience center is just a start," Mesnac's newly appointed chairman He Ning said at the event.
"In the future, maybe a tire maker can rent Mesnac's facilities for production instead of building its own plant," added the company's former chairman Yuan Zhongxue.
Mesnac also took the opportunity to launch a new machine model called TPRO-S, a uni-stage three-drum tire building machine for truck and bus tires.
Compared to generation machinery, the fully modularized new model is designed to increase average dynamic balance by 20 percent and uniformity by 15 percent.
With daily output of up to 500 tires, it is said to reduce cycle time by nearly 20 percent to 150 seconds and requires only two operators.