BY BARBARA T. NELLES
Machinery suppliers BedTimes spoke with ranged from cautiously to boldly optimistic about prospects for the coming 12 months. They are encouraged by the number of mattress manufacturers out shopping for equipment—or at least making inquiries. And they say they are ready to meet mattress makers’ needs with a variety of innovations and improvements.
“The economic slowdown has affected us all, but it has also afforded an opportunity for us to sit down, brainstorm ideas and come up with improvements and new features for new and existing machinery,” says Andreas Georgallis, financial director of Amelco Industries Ltd., a Nicosia, Cyprus–based machinery supplier. “Right now, our customers are most interested in innovations that allow for greater speed, greater reliability and product differentiation.”
Amelco has made several updates to its roll–pack machine to speed up the roll–packing process. The RL2000A incorporates an adjustable feeding table, a vacuum system on the mandrel that automatically draws the paper and an automatic bale–strapping feature.
One key focus of machinery suppliers is customization that allows mattress manufacturers to build novel or exclusive features into beds—whether it’s an interesting foam convolution, an original handle style or a decorative quilt pattern.
Suppliers also are offering more automation in foam cutting and wire forming. And, continuing a trend, they are “de–skilling” machine operations and making it easier for workers to cross train on multiple machines, which are often grouped in manufacturing cells.
And, importantly, there is new machinery that reduces costs by cutting out manufacturing steps.
For instance, Masias Maquinaria SA, with headquarters in Girona, Spain, manufactures fiber–processing, filling and quilting machinery. Its Direct Feeding System for quilting feeds open polyester fiber into the quilt, eliminating the need for thermo–bonded polyester wadding rolls.
“It’s both a money saver and a step saver,” says Sonia Ortiz, Masias area manager. Even greater savings can be had by adding extra polyester fiber to the quilt to replace a portion of the foam, Ortiz says.
But during still–tough economic times, there remains a place for manufacturing using basic machinery and tried–and–true methods, suppliers say.
“Mattress makers who need simple machines can still find them,” says Steven Kaplan, president of S. Kaplan Sewing Machine Co. Inc. in Newark, N.J. “You may not need something as automated or productive if you’re producing just eight hours a day. That’s where our equipment fits in. We make many of the fill–ins needed for mattress production. For instance, handles are cyclical, they come and go. Right now, they’re starting to come back and we build equipment to make sewn handles.”
Customization is king
Most major machinery suppliers have machine shops capable of engineering new or existing equipment to the specific needs of their customers.
Remex AG, a maker of wire–forming machinery based in Steinach, Switzerland, says a considerable portion of its recent business has been for large mattress manufacturers who are incorporating unique spring designs into their beds.
“They look to us to do the job because we can customize equipment or create new machinery that builds springs to their specifications,” says Remex owner Bernhard Graf.
Custom work and refurbishing customers’ existing equipment have kept many machinery suppliers busy during the recent recession.
D.R. Cash Inc. in Fairdale, Ky., specializes in custom fabricating everything from mattress–filling machines to quilting carts, says Thomas Johnson, D.R. Cash mechanical engineer.
“And we just introduced a vertical bale opener that, with a few tweaks, can be oriented horizontally for customers with ceiling height issues,” Johnson says.
“We listen to customers and make minor changes in machinery,” says Roy Schlegel, president of Edgewater Machine Co. Inc. (EMCO), a quilting machinery supplier in College Point, N.Y. “Even software features can be customized to their needs—and we do these for free.”
Emphasis on ornamentation
Many recent innovations are in border manufacturing as mattress makers look to dress up beds and move away from uniform borders. New machines address a resurgence in handles, interest in embroidery and labeling and other border ornamentation.
“From a developmental standpoint, our recent focus has been on panels and, most particularly, on borders, with the goal of helping mattress manufacturers differentiate themselves on the bedding floor by dressing up the border,” says Hank Little, president of Atlanta Attachment Co., which has headquarters in Lawrenceville, Ga.
Setting handles manually is time consuming, taking about 15 minutes to place vertical handles on a queen–size mattress, Little says. This year, Atlanta Attachment introduced its 4300 Automatic Vertical Handle Machine, which serges the border, measures it to length and sets four to eight handles automatically. It can set perfectly straight vertical handles at the rate of two queen mattresses per minute, Little says.
Leggett & Platt’s Global Systems Group, which is based in Sunrise, Fla., offers the Porter PALS 2000 Auto Label Sewer for attaching labels to borders.
Tacking labels to today’s puffy quilts distorts the top panel of the bed, which is why the vast majority of labels are now on the bed’s border, says Russ Bowman, GSG president. The new Porter machine provides a fast, economical solution, according to the company.
“Also on the border, we’re seeing more and more tack–and–jump quilting in the last year and a half,” Bowman says. The company’s new Gribetz B–45 Specialty Border Quilter, which can quilt borders on 45–inch wide material, addresses that decorative trend.
Atlanta Attachment has modified its 1366 Automatic Vertical Stitch Machine to handle taller, single–sided beds by adding electronic controls that make it programmable for different mattress heights.
“The machine also knows where it is at any specific time on the border and it allows you to change the stitch pattern to indicate where different zoning areas of the bed might be,” Little says.
Other border machines from Atlanta Attachment include the 1374 Decorative Stud Border Workstation—which allows you to “dress up the bed and bring color and excitement to the border,” Little says.
“Our ruffled border machine allows manufacturers to use short rolls of border or old rolls of border, which in the past would be considered waste,” he says. “You can splice together fabric and put a top layer of tick over it, basically making a new border from what used to be scrap.
You may want to use it on a box spring to ruffle the border or perhaps just at the corners. You can also turn off the ruffling feature and use the machine for simple border serging.”
GSG has redesigned its Gribetz border slitter. The ProSlit is a programmable slitter that repositions the blade at the touch of a button instead of having an operator manually move each of the 14 blades.
For high–end mattress production, there is the 4500 Single Lane Border Quilter from Atlanta Attachment, which allows manufacturers to reduce work in process and waste.
“You can take a slit roll and quilt specific single borders in limited runs,” Little says.
In the thick of it
Some of the biggest innovations of the past few years have been machines to help manufacturers handle thicker mattresses and premium quilt packages.
Machinery supplier James Cash Machine Co. offers the MX–100 “The Max,” a tape–edge machine with electronic braking. It handles up to a 30–inch mattress and has been a big seller, says Bob Ferry, vice president of the Louisville, Ky.–based company. The company carries an extensive parts inventory for its machinery and also custom designs machinery for its customers, Ferry adds.
In March, Matsushita Industrial Co. Ltd. introduced the M–S–T601. The tape–edge machine, engineered in Japan and manufactured in China, is designed to handle extra–thick American mattresses, says Yosuke Takeuchi, general manager of the Osaka, Japan–based company.
GSG describes its Pfaff 5625 sewing head, which was introduced about four years ago, as the “heaviest duty tape–edge head in the world,” Bowman says. Extra–wide decorative tapes are a design trend and tape–edge machines are handling tapes as wide as 6 inches.
GSG promotes the Porter PFM–4000 and the Galkin X5 as the flange machines “most capable of handling thick, dense mattress panels,” Bowman says.
“With the incorporation of FR material—which is extremely dense—and the advent of one–sided beds, filler materials in quilt panels now require heavy–duty, high–speed quilters,” he says. “The Gribetz ParagonM+ is the fastest quilter in the world and has been enhanced three levels since 2001. It’s unsurpassed in the thickness and density of the panels it can handle.”
Atlanta Attachment’s 1365 Auto–Tuft and Quilting Workstation (Marquise Diamond), a single–needle quilter with tufting, performs two functions at once. The machine allows mattress makers to program unique quilt patterns and place tufts wherever they want in the top mattress panel. It handles all quilting materials, including specialty foams, Little says.
Creative foam cutting
Foam’s growing importance in mattress construction has led to strong interest in advanced foam–cutting machinery. Machines offer greater automation, speed and accuracy for an increasing number of foam–related tasks.
“A lot of my customers tell me their scrap is their profit,” says Kevin Ryan, president of foam–cutting equipment maker ESCO (Edge–Sweets Co.), based in Grand Rapids, Mich. “The less scrap they can produce, the greater their profit. Automation produces the best quality product in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of waste.”
Ryan says automated lines enable some of his customers to “begin with a block of foam and end with a finished mattress—without a single human touching it.”
Since 2007, the company has been networking its machines to allow one operator to control an entire production line. In 2009, it added “synthetic vision systems” to foam cutting.
Vision systems, originally developed for aviation use by the U.S. Air Force and NASA, reduce waste and improve quality control, Ryan says.
“Every block of foam, like every loaf of bread, is slightly different,” he says. “The vision system looks at the block and decides the best way to cut it.”
Last year, Wintech Engineering based in Perth, Australia, updated its Wintech Oscillating Blade Contour Cutter, making it even more reliable and accurate, says Jim Tweddle, Wintech Engineering managing director.
The machine, with its patented gear box design, is a “flexible work cell for smaller mattress manufacturers, as it is able to peel, sheet and contour cut foams in both the horizontal and vertical axis,” Tweddle says. “Large mattress makers with dedicated production lines of special purpose machines use it for R&D work and for small orders or special cuts that cannot be performed on their production line.”
Fully automated foam–cutting lines are a specialty of Albrecht Bäumer GmbH & Co. KG, a supplier of foam–cutting machinery based in Freudenberg, Germany.
“Europe has seen the centralization of mattress manufacturing among a handful of major producers and a growth in mass production methods over the last three to four years,” says Harald Kullmann, Albrecht Bäumer sales director.
One major manufacturer in Europe is making 8,500 mattresses a day and Albrecht Bäumer’s fully automated foam–cutting lines allow it to create just–in–time stockpiles of “spotlessly clean” goods, Kullmann says.
“With automation, there is greater yield, less waste and less manpower,“ he says. “With visco–elastic, the convolutions help heat escape and now all companies want their own pattern exclusives.”
Springs production speeds up
Remex it sees a trend toward the use of automated wire–forming equipment, even in regions of the world where labor costs are low. The company’s Fully Automatic Transfer Line RC 247 has conveyor belts and automatic assembly for the production of knotless spring cores. Any spring shape can be programmed and stored in memory for later recall, according to the company.
Spühl AG, a wire–forming machinery maker based in Wittenbach, Switzerland, won an Interzum Cologne award in 2009 for its CS–525, an electronically controlled high–speed transfer machine for the production of zoned Bonnell spring units with two different wire gauges. Its new FIDES FT–80 transfer system for Bonnell spring units allows for the fully automated production of as many as 150 200–coil count innerspring units per day.
Demand for encased coils is growing around the world and that is driving innovation and competition, says Matsushita’s Takeuchi. Last year, the company introduced the TECMIC Packed Coil Machine PKTA–3R–UC, a three–row, high–speed wrapped coil assembler that Matsushita says is twice as fast as a previous model and able to produce zoned coils.
What’s next?
Machinery suppliers say they are at work on even more automation, customization, efficiency and accuracy in mattress manufacturing equipment.
For instance, this year Atlanta Attachment will introduce a new panel cutter with even greater speed and accuracy. Working behind the quilter, it will cut and pre–stitch panels to ensure correct sizing prior to the flange application, the company says.
To survive and be successful in this business, you must continue to innovate,” says ESCO’s Ryan. “Among our customers, ideas are constantly taking shape and we are partners in that. There’s a spirit in bedding—people are excited about this industry. In two years time, you’ll see lots that’s new.”
Cell manufacturing allows multitasking
For the past few years, cell manufacturing has been a focus at machinery supplier Global Systems Group, a division of Leggett & Platt based in Sunrise, Fla. The term refers to a configuration of machines that work in tandem.
“It’s like having minifactories within a plant—versus every man for himself getting paid per piece,” says Russ Bowman, GSG president. “You put maybe four closely related machines in a work cell—with two to three operators who have complete control over the destiny of the product. For instance, with a quilt, cut and flange cell group, you turn individual production incentives into a team incentive, create pride of ownership and better quality control over the finished product.”
In a work cell, employees multitask. They are cross trained on multiple machines, while at the same time tasks are “de–skilled” as much as possible.
“We see it as the next wave in manufacturing set–up,” Bowman says. “Cell manufacturing reduces ‘work in process’ to attain just–in–time deliveries, reduce the carrying cost of raw materials and reduce waste.”
Learn more
In this article, BedTimes examines trends in mattress machinery. The story is not intended as a complete rundown of all suppliers and their offerings. If you seek mattress manufacturing machinery, check the easy–to–use online BedTimes Supplies Guide for a comprehensive directory of suppliers.
