Скачать или смотреть TOMCAT Wood Chippers South Africa Company Overview - KYKNET ONTBYTSAKE

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An introduction into the establishment, development, manufacturing processes of TOMCAT Wood Chippers. TOMCAT is a local South African design and manufactured in our factory in Worcester, South Africa. Our drum-style wood chippers are designed to last in our African environment. This video gives a brief overview of where we began as company and where we are today.

The idea of a locally manufactured wood chipper range with the capacity of chipping between 100mm and 250mm brush started back in 2008. Proper market research was done and the first ever TOMCAT came to life in a garage at the beginning of 2009. It was a PTO gravity-fed unit with 150mm chipping capacity. This unit was the first and only gravity-feed chipper in TOMCAT’s history with a horizontal in-feed hopper similar to our modern-day hydraulic-feed units. It was welded onto a double axle trailer to make it tow-able. It was taken to a nearby test site where it was hooked behind a Vaaljapie tractor. The first test branch was thrown into the chipper's feed hopper with huge anticipation and mixed emotions. Faces lit up when the wood chips went flying through the air! The pulling power of the chipper was exceptional. The wood chips were collected and inspected to make sure that the dimensions of the wood chips were correct. And so the TOMCAT journey began.

The first 59 TOMCAT wood chippers were manufactured by a local engineering company in town. The assembly was done in the heart of the Boland in a small workshop located in the industrial area of Worcester.

This was only until 2011, at which point the TOMCAT Manufacturing department was started, taking control over the boiler-making, welding and final assembly of the product at the premises in Worcester where we are today. Most of the production process was still outsourced at this point, such as spray-painting, drum-balancing, hydraulics, trailers and electronics. However, this was extremely time consuming as all the suppliers were located at different locations and some were as far as 100km away from the factory. Quality control was difficult to do and tedious. For example, when a defect was spotted on the spray-painting, the chipper had to be transported back to the spray-painting company in town. We had to wait for a slot to get fit in their production line and then have the machine transported back to our factory. This also contributed to frustrated salesman and many potential deals lost.

The decision was then made to start building the whole product in-house and under one roof, so that we can take complete control of every part of the production process. This was a costly procedure, but by doing so we could track the chippers’ progress, check the quality every step of the way, save costs and honour delivery dates set by ourselves. Today the TOMCAT Manufacturing Plant consists of a boiler maker, 3 full-time welding sections, a drum balancing section, state of the art spray-painting booth, pre-assembly bay, cleaning section, final assembly bay and dedicated chipper workshop. We do our own hydraulics and also have two fully qualified auto-electricians. Each station is responsible for a specific part of the process and the tradesman at that station is qualified in his relevant field. Quality insurance is done throughout the production process, which ensures quality and reduces downtime. The average production time of a new chipper from date of order used to be 16 to 20 weeks. In 2020 we managed to streamline this process to down to 10 working days should all the parts be in stock at the parts store.
http://www.tomcatchippers.co.za