SHARINGYOURCHALLENGES
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Technologies
Iker Garmendia, manager of Fagor Arrasate Mexico. The Querétaro plant has multiplied its workforce by 10 since its opening in 2017
Our direct presence in Mexico is a commitment to the future that customers value very positively for the “peace of mind” it brings them. “They know that we can react quickly and efficiently to any situation, with no time difference”.
The proximity and direct contact with customers is such that “in many plants they know us personally, with names and surnames, those of us who manage service or maintenance, and they know that we are the ones who give them the answers”.
Garmendia emphasizes how Service “is a factor that is of growing importance in the decision process of our customers to make new investments”. More and more companies “first ask about the installations, the local technicians and the operation of the after-sales service, before talking about the technical aspects of the machines”.
The first time I was here in Mexico was almost 20 years ago, in January 2004, involved in the project management of a press line in Puebla. I liked it from the very first moment. When I started to get to know the country, the people, how they worked, the industrial production capacity, the power of the country, I realized that it was not at all like I had visualized it before landing here.
We imagined Mexico and Mexicans in a different way, more calm and relaxed. And then you come here and discover a completely different reality. In complex projects I found people very involved in getting the job done.
The personal adaptation to Mexico was easy, I really felt at home from the first day. Without the language barrier you can talk to everyone and fend for yourself. The difficult challenge was to start up the new plant in Querétaro and the Fagor Arrasate Mexico project.
As an example of the evolution of the plant’s capabilities, Garmendia points out that “we are carrying out a retrofit consisting of the installation of a CNC6 transfer with destacker that we are going to mount in our plant and for which we will carry out tests. We are working closely with the entire Fagor Arrasate organization to complete the equipment with local personnel who will finally deliver the equipment to the end customer’s facilities, and that is clearly an indication that customers trust us for this type of complex projects.”
THE ORIGINS
We started on May 1, 2017 with only 3 people. There are now 22 of us and we plan to end the year with a team of 30 people. At that time we did not even imagine that now, in 2023, we could be carrying out projects as complex as the ones we are doing, and that we could have such a well-developed team.
From the very beginning, we started to get involved in projects that had a fairly high degree of difficulty, with large orders for retrofits, and since then we have been growing in our ability to carry out increasingly complex projects autonomously.
OUR PEOPLE
The people who make up the Fagor Arrasate plant in Mexico are the cornerstone of the subsidiary’s success, in the words of its manager, who has made a strong commitment to attracting and retaining local talent. “Thanks to this highly qualified team, we have the production and assistance capacity to provide the best support to our customers in very complex projects, and to do it autonomously, from here”.
Two years ago, the subsidiary began a dynamic of winning projects on a constant basis and “considerably larger than we had originally planned”. To respond to this demand, the team was reinforced with programmers and mechanical technicians in order to have the most specialized people possible and the most adapted to the products that Fagor Arrasate is delivering today.
In Mexico there is a lot of personnel turnover, “but no one has left us in a year and a half,” he points out. “We are a solid company, which has a well-positioned market image and offers a very enriching training and experience”. The technicians spend time at the headquarters to familiarize themselves with the equipment and technology. “We work with very cutting-edge machines and in a sector that is growing a lot and that also helps to attract talent.”
“As an example of this, I interviewed a candidate who was not convinced to take the position. I told him to look on our website at the type of machines we make and to visualize that he was going to be involved in the assembly and set-up of that equipment and what that was going to bring to his professional development. Two hours later he called me to say ‘count me in’.”
"MÉXICO HAS MANY POSSIBILITIES TO BE A VERY SUCCESSFUL COUNTRY"
“Mexico has some very good cards at the moment and has many possibilities of being a very successful country in the short and medium term”. Iker Garmendia has no doubts about Mexico’s enormous potential to continue expanding its industry, thanks to the great development it has undergone, its skilled labor force and its proximity to the United States.
With the problems in the supply chains, the increase in the price of transportation or geopolitical tensions, ‘Nearshoring’ has gained strength to bring production closer to the territory of consumption. “Many of the North American companies that used to manufacture in Asia are beginning to choose Mexico as the country where they see that their costs are still competitive and the distances are smaller”, in a context where transportation costs have increased, he explains.
Mexican industry has been able to expand and adapt to international demands to position itself as one of the most competitive. The country “has had an industrial evolution hand in hand with the United States and has adapted to the best manufacturing standards worldwide”. It also has a very competitive labor market, where people “know how to work, have been trained, have experience and a great involvement in the work”.
“Mexico is very well positioned strategically at a global level” due to its productive capacities, its labor market and its free trade agreement with the United States and Canada, Garmendia remarks.
OPEN HOUSE AT OUR QUERÉTARO PLANT
In June 2023, we organized an open house at our Querétaro plant, which was a great success. More than 30 people representing 11 companies with industrial plants in the country participated. Both Tier 1s from the automotive sector and OEMs from the home appliance sector honored us with their presence and attended with interest the explanations of our colleagues. On the one hand, we showed the capacity of our Querétaro plant not only as a local support point for customers in the region, but also as a production center, both for new machines and retrofits. On the other hand, we exhibited our innovations in transfer automation, 3D vision quality control systems and robotic stacking, which generated great interest and expectation.
Attendees were also able to see the CNCS-6 transfer and the CL destacker for a 2000T transfer press that were being assembled in Querétaro to be delivered directly by Fagor Arrasate Mexico.