During a ceremony held at Pirelli’s headquarters in Milan, Italy recentlym VMI received the Supplier Award for high quality and support. Chief purchasing officer Matteo Battaini handed over the Award to Harm Voortman, CEO of VMI Group:
Tyre manufacturing equipment maker VMI has added a vertical pallet lift with high handling capacity to its product portfolio. The lift is for large batch-offs, mainly for the tyre industry.
VMI reports that it is paying special attention to retreading at Tire Cologne, taking advantage of the fact that the show has a dedicated retreading hall and the Global Retreading Conference running alongside it. Organized by Koelnmesse and the European retreading association BIPAVER, the global conference for the retreading industry will take place for the very first time in the context of The Tire premiere in Cologne.
In early January VMI launched a new company website. According to the tyre manufacturing machinery maker, the new site is entirely styled in the firm’s new corporate branding. It is also said to features “more information on the VMI products and services”. Company representatives explained that the site has been designed to give “an improved browser experience with easy navigation and is furthermore optimized for mobile usage”.
Bill Bisson has joined VMI Americas as area sales manager. In his new role, he will oversee sales of VMI’s extruder-gear pump systems.
The VMI Duchenne Heroes team completed recently complete a seven day mountain bike tour for charity. A team of 38 mountain bikers and 14 support team members have raised over 96,000 Euros for the Duchenne Parent Project.
On 5 September VMI opened a new factor in Leszno, Poland. The location was officially opened by Lukasz Borowiak, mayor of Leszno and Alexander van der Lof, chairman of the executive board of TKH Group.
Safe-Run has announced that it has made “significant progress” in the patent invalidation and patent litigation process against VMI Holland B.V. Safe-Run explained that the Patent Reexamination Board of State Intellectual Property Office declared that the VMI’s invention patent “Assembly for and Method of Making a Tyre Component” is “entirely invalid”. According to the company, the patent declared invalid is deemed to have “not existed from the very beginning”. In addition, the court has dismissed VMI’s litigation action against Safe-Run for this patent infringement. For its part, VMI stated that it made progress in the same series of cases and that it would appeal a number of adverse verdicts.
China’s Patent Re-examination Board has upheld important patents relating to tyre building technology developed by VMI. Commenting on the board’s decision, VMI Group chief executive officer Harm Voortman said “this decision further strengthens our position in the legal dispute with Safe-Run and reaffirms our confidence in the Chinese legal system.”
Machinery manufacturer VMI says it is increasingly active in South America, and in response VMI South America Ltda has moved to a new and larger location. On 12 May, VMI South America opened its new facility in the Brazilian city of Itatiaia, approximately half way between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Managing director Robson Souza de Araujo and his team now have approximately 1,350 square metres of floorspace at their disposal, an area divided into workshop and office space.
Prof Dr Edward Holweg will be appointed as the new COO of VMI Group effective 1 April 2017. Dr Holweg succeeds Guido Roncken MBA, who held this position for over 10 years.
VMI edged ahead of fellow shortlistee Comerio Ercole in what is said to be a very tight race to win Tire Industry Supplier of the Year for the second time. The 2017 award was received by Harm Voortman, VMI Group president and chief executive officer, at the TTX Award gala dinner on 15 February.
VMI has introduced what it calls VMI Remote Guidance, which is designed to ensure “immediate support 24/7 on VMI equipment.” The system uses high resolution video to enable VMI’s remote support engineer to guide the customer through the faultfinding procedure in order to quickly resolve the issue without the need to travel to site.
The proprietary vision technology found within the latest generation of VMI tyre building machinery, such as MAXX and MILEXX, aims to enable complete hands-off, eyes-off production. Industry 4.0 is taking automation one step further by encouraging greater connectivity, higher levels of automation and a greater use of machine intelligence to drive speed, agility and production integration. With this in mind, and in response to the demands of high speed tyre building, VMI is now introducing a PIXXEL, a platform it developed in-house.
VMI Group broke ground on its new manufacturing plant in Leszno, Poland on 2 November 2016. In the first phase, the company is building a 13,500 m2 facility on its 8 hectare plot of land with goal of extending the current manufacturing capabilities of the company. VMI Group now has entities in 8 countries on 5 continents.
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