Molds in high demand in domestic market

Since the operation of Samsung factory in the Saigon Hi-tech Park (SHTP), the need for different kinds of mold has dramatically increased. However, due to the limit of technology and human resources, domestic mold manufacturers unfortunately cannot satisfy this demand.

Samsung factory to produce television, located in SHTP
Samsung factory to produce television, located in SHTP

Insufficient to meet the market’s huge needs

In Vietnam at the moment, there are many prestigious manufacturers of molds like Duy Khanh, Lap Phuc, Duy Tan, Cat Thai, Minh Dat, Phu Vinh, or Minh Nguyen. Yet all of them cannot meet all the demands of the domestic market.

According to Mr. Chau Ba Long, CEO of Minh Nguyen Company, the revenues come from supplying molds to Samsung factory reach $15 million per year, and this is merely 1 percent of Samsung’s huge needs. Noticeably, Vietnamese mold businesses are only able to create level 3 and 4 molds, so they have to import level 1 and 2 ones.

Since many factories do not have formal and clear investment plan, they cannot possess either complicated machinery or safe materials and proper manufacturing procedures, designs to create even simple molds with high preciseness.

Experts explain that universities of this major do not provide fine courses for their students, leading to the appearance of very low capacity graduates who need more training to be suitable for the real job. The lack of high-quality human resources has forced manufacturers to further train newly hired engineers in 2 to 3 years before they can truly work in the field.

Automation must become priority

As stated by Mr. Young Moo Heo (from Kitech Company of South Korea), in his country, small companies are responsible for creating molds for larger businesses working in the fields of manufacturing cars, airplanes, transistors, electronic devices, digital machines, household appliances. Thanks to their continuous learning and synchronous investment, these small companies are able to apply new technologies to make Computer Numerical Control (CNC) and NC molds or even manufacture them automatically since 2000 despite having only 10 – 50 workers per organization.

Therefore, at the moment, the management board of SHTP has contacted its Korean partner to boost the technology transfer process in the hope that domestic mold factories can better serve the market.

Particularly, it has researched the Kitech model to prepare a proposal for related local authorities to build a mold center in SHTP. This is supposed to achieve the three aims of researching, transferring technologies, and training human resources for the field in the near future.

The revolution on computers has greatly affected industrial production, especially the modern mold manufacturing. Information technology has been widely utilized to change traditional production methods into high-tech ones. As a result, the stages of designing and manufacturing mold are gradually automated while cooperation has been quickly form among companies of the field to take full advantage of their own machinery capacity to create high-quality molds.

Other news