Stepping up a gear

When Cho Takwong founded Fuyao Group in China in 1987, few could have predicted that 30 years later the company would have become a major group employing 16,000 staff members in China and around the globe.Today, the business is led by Cho Takwong’s son, who took over the reins in 2007. The group includes ten Chinese production sites and a Russian plant commissioned in 2013, with further locations planned in the United States and Brazil. This expansion is largely thanks to strong global demand for specialist automotive glass, particularly in emerging markets like Brazil. Fuyao already dominates China’s automotive glass industry with a market share of over 70 percent, while international customers include Audi, Bentley, BMW, Daimler, VW and many more.

More and more automobile manufacturers are opting for the FY brand of special glass from Fuyao Group. (Photo: Fuyao)

Siemens as co-driver

As one of the world’s leading manufacturers of automotive and industrial glass, Fuyao has a long history of collaborating with Siemens to standardize operations in its glass processing plants. A number of Fuyao’s locations currently use Simatic controls in their glass plate production lines, and Simatic WinCC software is installed to provide a scalable process visualization system for monitoring automated processes. Siemens has also provided a wide array of drive technology in the form of Simotion Motion Control Systems, together with Sinamics frequency converters.

The particular advantage with Siemens is that the company is already active in all of Fuyao’s expansion markets. So the groundwork is already in place for Siemens and Fuyao to take their collaboration up a gear – on an international scale. Possible projects include the installation of site-wide automation in plants, complete with financial services and project management – all from a single source.

Sustainability up close

Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co., Ltd. has patented numerous special glass products for the automotive sector. The group’s research focuses on pioneering new products (e.g. solar glass roofs), technology (e.g. thinner toughened glass), equipment (e.g. bending furnaces) and materials (e.g. ceramic and silver). This investment in R&D has produced innovations such as glass roofs for vehicles that absorb and reflect sunlight to lower the inside temperature. Or even photovoltaic glass roofs that allow energy savings. The group has also developed a range of windshields with high-performance properties, such as windshields made of acoustic glass or ultra-light laminated safety glass. Then there are even windshields with clever functions, such as rain detectors to activate wipers, heating filaments to defrost and eliminate smearing, or solar absorption and reflection to lower the vehicle temperature – to name just a few of Fuyao’s trendsetting glass products.