Category Archives: Manufacturing

Toshiba

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Toshiba domestic appliances a money-loser in 2016 is now showing signs of a comeback under Midea Group as it leverages its new Chinese parent’s sales channels across Asia.

The Toshiba appliance business “is an important component in the globalization of Midea. We want to grow it into a world-leading appliance maker,” said Fang Hongbo, chairman and president of Midea.

Toshiba appliances disappeared from Chinese shelves in 2015 due to sluggish sales. They returned a year later via the retail network of Midea, which acquired Toshiba’s appliance business, Toshiba Lifestyle Products & Services.

“This is a popular product that uses Toshiba’s advanced technology,” says a saleswoman at a Midea appliance shop in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. Amid the shelves of Midea products stand Toshiba-brand microwaves, of which the most expensive costs 12,999 yuan ($1,922) — around twice the price of its Midea equivalent.

The multifunctional Toshiba microwave can be used to make a variety of dishes, such as employing high-temperature steam to broil fish. “It’s also very durable,” the saleswoman said. “Those who enjoy cooking hold it in high regard.”

Midea is a big presence in the appliance market, generating sales of around 240 billion yuan in fiscal 2017. But its core lineup consists of inexpensive products limited to basic features. The company is working to move upmarket and has positioned the Toshiba brand as its top of the line.

Under Midea, Toshiba Lifestyle is accelerating its overseas expansion. Midea plans to open a new plant in western India as early as 2020 and will locally produce and market such Toshiba-brand products as washing machines and microwave ovens, marking the brand’s return to the market after a 2012 exit. Depending on demand, other items like refrigerators may be added to the mix. Investment of more than $1.8 billion is expected over the next five years.

Toshiba Lifestyle is also cultivating the entire Southeast Asian market, including places like Cambodia and Myanmar. Besides using its own factories in Thailand and China, Toshiba Lifestyle is procuring products from Midea under an original equipment manufacturer arrangement.

In the second half of 2018, Toshiba put more than 30 new items on sale in Thailand, including refrigerators where the freezer is on one side, a type little seen in Japan.

When Toshiba Lifestyle was under Toshiba, it was never more than one division of a larger engineering company. When earnings faltered at the parent, it did not receive sufficient money for product development, falling into a cycle where it became less competitive.

But after it was bought by Midea, Toshiba Lifestyle began receiving enough funds to develop products that met the needs of the marketplace, company executives say. The goal now is to use Midea’s marketing network to increase the portion of overseas sales at Toshiba Lifestyle to 50% from the current level of around 30% by 2020.

Earnings are recovering as Toshiba Lifestyle’s revenue jumped more than 50% from fiscal 2015 to 250 billion yen ($2.3 billion) in calendar 2017. The company probably moved back into the black last year even without restructuring measures like layoffs. Cost-cutting moves such as production at Midea’s Chinese plants and joint parts procurement seem to have had a positive impact.

Other Japanese brands revived under Chinese parents include the white goods business of Sanyo Electric, which returned to profitability several years after being sold to Haier Group in 2012.

Grundig’s Gourmet Chef Smart Oven

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Grundig’s Gourmet Chef Smart Oven is equipped with advanced connected technologies and sensors allowing users to precisely control the temperature of their food as it cooks to ensure the best results. This includes a moisture and oxygen sensor, a temperature control sensor and BLDC motor, an integrated camera and a multipoint meat probe. The Gourmet Chef oven also features a 7” Touch TFT Display that lets users control these in-oven smart functions, allowing for easy monitoring and adjustments to the cooking process.

In addition to these smart functions, Grundig’s Steam Assist technology allows users to easily cook poultry, meat and fish to the perfect level of tenderness, as well as bread and pastries to rival an artisan bakery. The secret ingredient is multiple bursts of steam released throughout the cooking cycle at predetermined times based on the selected automatic cooking programme. This ensures that baked goods retain up to 7% more moisture, and develop a rise 14% higher than they would in a traditional oven, as well as a crisp and shiny crust. Full steam cooking is also an ideal cooking method for users looking to maintain a healthy diet, as it removes the need to cook using oil. This cooking process also allows the food to retain a higher quantity of vitamins and minerals. The Gourmet Chef Smart Oven offers full steam and combination steam cooking programmes, and can also be used as a conventional oven.

The intuitive innovation doesn’t stop there. Dealing with the aftermath of a spitting joint of meat is no longer a problem thanks to Grundig’s advanced automatic self-cleaning with water, which cleans the whole oven at the touch of a button. And to ensure that users’ cleaning practices remain sustainable, quick cleaning functions start at off-peak electricity hours

Sharp Turns Home Cooks into Culinary Champions with Dynamic Oven Series

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Whatever the size of your kitchen, whatever the scope of your culinary know-how, you can cook like a champion with Sharp 45cm-60cm built-in ovens. Bringing some serious cooking style to your everyday kitchen experience, this range will put an end to your daily mealtime slog. No more anxiety, no more cooking set-backs. Designed with speciality functions as well as mealtime trouble-shooter features, Sharp ovens will clear the way to culinary success.

Steam-assisted Oven with Air Curtain

Designed to fulfil great culinary ambition, this extra-large 75-litre capacity oven promises to raise your game in the kitchen. Perfectly grilling and browning your food, it comes with 10 cooking functions enabling you to find exactly the right cooking conditions for every dish.

Any time you think you might need a little extra help, you can always count on Sharp oven’s steam-assisted power. If your meat looks in danger of becoming a little tough, or your vegetables a little dried out, then simply add a puff of steam with the manual steam option. One quick steam injection can change the course of your cooking, ensuring mouth-wateringly delicious results every time. steam-assisted functionality is also great for baking. Rather than fall flat or dry up, your pastries will rise, and anything you cook will stay crispy on the outside and mouth-wateringly juicy on the inside. Best of all, thanks to the steam, your cooking is likely to be more nutritious, as more of your dish’s vitamins and nutrients can be preserved with this cooking method.

When the pressure is on, you can always cheat your way to culinary success. With 150 bang-on-trend autocooking recipes, including 20 that are for steam-assisted cooking, this oven is always there to support you, automatically setting the ideal programme, temperature and cooking duration for every dish you can imagine.

Whatever you decide to make, you’ll aways stay cool thanks to the oven’s Air Curtain feature. Using an air stream, Air Curtain prevents any hot air from escaping the inside of the cavity whenever the oven door is opened.

For the dreaded post-meal oven clean, you can also count on more support. The oven’s VapClean+ function uses steam to dislodge grease and grime, leaving you nothing to do but gently wipe clean the inside of the oven.

45cm Compact Series: Small but Mighty

Discover your inner masterchef with our dynamic compact series. Comprising of a sleek 45cm oven and matching warming drawer, this range is designed to take you to new culinary heights. Small but mighty, both the oven and the warming drawer are the ideal fit for even tight kitchen spaces, enabling you to install both products as part of a drop down wall formation.

Designed with one of the largest capacities for a 45cm model, our 50-litre oven not only enables you to cook, grill and brown your food, but also to ensure extra special cooking results, even when you might have started to over-heat your dish a little. Thanks to its steam-assisted power, it not only gives you the power to bake more professionally, but also to refresh your dish with a quick puff of steam during the cooking process.

Bringing you more culinary adventure, it also comes with 20 autocooking functions and the VapClean+ function to take care of the post-meal oven clean-up.

Matching Warming Drawer

So much more than just a place to keep your dishes warm,Sharp matching warming drawer doubles up as an additional cooking support, offering a place for you to defrost food, warm up soups and pastries, and prove bread.

Thanks to its gentle push door mechanic, you can also open and close it without having to worry that the motion will cause any stored dishes to spill or capsize.

The PerFector 60cm Oven

Meet the PerFector, a game-changing oven that will correct and perfect your dishes. Why waste time putting on your oven gloves and re-positioning your oven tray when, simply by touching a button, you can automatically move your dish to one of five shelf levels? Compensating for any minor cooking oversights, this meal-time hero is made to keep your dish on track. If you find yourself short on cooking time, move your tray from the bottom to nearer the top of the oven to speed up the heating process and ensure a perfectly browned surface for your dish. If your food is beginning to look a little too crisp on top, then simply move it down a level or two for more gentle heating.

Sharp supermodel also comes with a whole host of other features, offering a series of 10 programmes, which include a pizza function for baking as well as a grill and turnspit cycle to make the perfect roast. For the post-meal oven clean, you can count on PerFector’s VapClean function, which dislodges and breaks down the toughest grease and grime using the steam generated from a water-filled tray.

AirStream Oven

Break all culinary rules and discover multi-dish cooking. Saving you more time in the kitchen, AirStream is the first ever oven to let you cook dishes across five shelf levels. In just one cooking session, you can make up to 5 pizzas or 100 cupcakes. What’s more, you can also be sure of perfectly even cooking results. Thanks to its double-fan structure and additional side air vents, this oven is capable of distributing hot air evenly, whatever the shelf level, whatever the shelf position.

With AirStream, you can also cater to individual dish requests, helping to keep the whole family happy at mealtimes. Instead of having to run separate cooking cycles for each requested meal, you’re free to cook 3 entirely different dishes together without ever having to worry about any cross-contamination of flavour or odours.

European Sales and Marketing Director, Alberico Lissoni, comments, “Designed for real life, our ovens support you through the good times and the bad, offering quick fix remedies for minor cooking mishaps. For us, cooking should be a passion for everyday life, giving cooks of all abilities more opportunity to experiment with recipes and to concoct dishes, all without having to worry about tweaking temperature settings, or moving the oven tray

Whirlpool show of at CES

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Whirlpool Corporation will once again be present at CES in Las Vegas from 8 until January 11, 2019. A new range of ovens connected with augmented reality that will allow you to choose recipes based on the available ingredients and see the state of cooking without opening the oven thanks to augmented reality ; and a washer dryer with improved connectivity thanks to the new Whirlpool application.

Connected Hub Ovens

The new range of intelligent kitchen appliances includes a total of 28 cooking appliances with state-of-the-art technology such as the advanced digital kitchen platform from Yummly, owned by Whirlpool. Among its functions, stands out the technology of recognition of ingredients of this platform thanks to the augmented reality, which allows to detect ingredients and recommend recipes based on them, as well as preferences, tastes and cooking level of users. This improved platform became operational in December 2018 and in 2019 it will incorporate the Yummly® Meal Planning, with personalized weekly meal plans based on users’ dietary preferences, their schedule, number of meals and portions, as well as the ingredients available and restaurants for special occasions.

The new range of Connected Hub wall ovens is able to inform those families that need it most of the optimal cooking experience (from which grid to use what cooking cycle to select), in order to make sure that they are making the most of it your appliance

Also, the augmented reality allows to avoid the inevitable losses of heat and energy that occur when reviewing the state of cooking by opening the oven door, thanks to an internal vision system and an external zoom that allows to do it without having to open.

Wash in fewer steps Whirlpool will present at CES two models of front-loading washer-dryer connected to simplify the washing steps. Through the next integrations with Wear OS by Google, a new custom control from anywhere through Google Assistant, Alexa-enabled devices and the Whirlpool® application, Whirlpool® Smart Laundry devices will preview new features in this CES 2019.

For example, the new application includes a Spotting Guide that allows families to quickly identify how to deal with different spots: once the user enters the application with the type of stain and fabric, the guide automatically sends the recommendations to the washing machine and Suggested configurations to obtain the best result. It also allows up to 30 personalized wash cycles to be stored in the application and to manage the laundry from anywhere, even in movement, being able to order the start of the washing machine or the transfer of clothes.

In addition to the integration of Apple Watch, in 2019 Whirlpool’s connected washing machines will also be compatible with Google’s Wear operating system, in order to communicate remotely with these devices. In addition, the Whirlpool application will continue to send alert notifications to users’ mobiles and will continue its integration with the Amazon Dash replenishment system, which automatically arranges the purchase of detergent when it is running low.

Beyond the application, these intelligent washing appliances incorporate in the device itself intuitive shortcuts, such as the innovative Load & Go function, which allows to store up to 40 loads of detergent in the washing machine itself, which automatically dispenses the correct dose according to the size and characteristics of each load.

SIL FIM

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Italian company SIL FIM has been producing kitchen hoods since 1985. Its products will be displayed at IMM LivingKitchen 2019, where it will present innovative solutions, born from the know-how, the Italian quality, the entire control of the process of development, verification and production. SIL FIM, in fact, has a capable technical office, a laboratory recognized by NEMKO, equipped with the necessary equipment for the approval of products with regard to electrical safety, electromagnetic compatibility and energy labeling.
All the phases of realization of the products are carried out internally with proprietary equipment, allowing the direct control of each phase of the realization of the articles without the use of external companies. The SIL FIM offer is very wide, with about 300 models of different hoods, all located in the high end of the market. The main models are ceiling hoods downdraft hoods and hoods integrated into the hobs, but there are also built-in hoods and islands versions.
A large part of the SIL FIM production is OEM, and is dedicated to special brands with exclusive products developed on commission from the customer. The company also develops and produces hoods for special markets, such as China, Russia and USA.

ILVE hits 50

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ILVE is going to celebrate the 50° year since its foundation in 1969. The Italian company, specialized in the manufacturing of professional kitchen appliances for domestic use, will take part at IMM LivingKitchen 2019 with some of its most successful products, such as the Panoramagic cooking unit, Colonna Stellata (Star Chef Column), and the Pizza oven, but also interesting news, all to be discovered during the event. Panoramagic – Emo Design – is the upgraded version of an historic ILVE cooker, created in the 70s and revisited today, keeping all its innovative strength unchanged. It is composed by an ovens and cooker, from 60 cm to 120 cm, winners of the Good Design Award. Colonna Stellata, instead, is a column with an ultra-combi oven, including convection, microwave, steam, blast chiller and a vacuum machine. During LivingKitchen ILVE’s Corporate Chef Sandro Pietrobelli will demonstrate the different combined cooking cycles using the Star Chef Column, and will cook the real Pizza Napoletana using the pizza oven 400°, the built-in oven that cooks pizza in 2 minutes like a real pizzeria

Bora

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Bora, the kitchen appliances specialist, will take part to the next edition of LivingKitchen with all its news and a special focus on Bora Basic Collection, a range of products responding to the most different modern needs. Strengths of this range are the compact dimensions, maintaining a large space on the induction hob surface. Moreover, the models integrate the suction system that automatically communicates with the hob in a smart way. Touch controls are immediate and very easy to use. Installation is also very quick. Among the solutions that will be displayed at Living Kitchen 2019, the protagonist of the Bora stand will be the BFIA/BFIU Black “Full” induction hob with a two motors integrated fumes extractor system, with suction and filtering functions. The model features three levels of keeping warm, Power function, automatic switch off, timer on every cooking area with indication of residual heat, Bridge function and children safety system. The suction system, instead, offers both the automatic function or the choice among 9 power levels. Design is essential but very sophisticated.

Whirlpool – The Carinaro factory becomes a logistics base for spare parts

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The production plant in Carinaro (in the province of Caserta) – destined to be closed after the merger of Indesit in Whirlpool – has actually been converted into the largest logistics base for spare parts for the appliance company.

According to Il Sole 24 Ore : “On 60 thousand square meters of covered area (like seven football fields), the logistics platform manages 100 thousand different components, has a stock of 90 million euros, handles 3 thousand packages and pallets a day and It serves as many customers in the world, shipments for 12 million a year

The investment has penalized the employees who have become 320 from 800, even if the company has declared to want to focus on the workers, convinced that in the logistics the human control is still synonymous of guarantee of quality

Candy smart steam

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Smart Steam is a new range of ovens by Candy, characterized by the addition of steam during the traditional cooking. This special formula allows to prepare many kind of recipes with optimal results. The ovens of the new Candy collection are also very easy to use: users have only to pour water into the oven cavity, activate one of the 3 “steam” functions and press a button to turn the liquid into steam.
The addition of steam in cooking allows to give the food a perfect softness and a light internal consistency without altering taste. Combining with traditional cooking, it also helps to keep crispy dishes outside. Moreover, this function enhances the preparation of food that need leavening such as bread, focaccia, brioches and cakes.
All the ovens of the “Smart Steam” feature the functions of the Candy Simply-Fi app that suggests recipes and gives useful advices. In addition, thanks to the “Aquactiva” hydrolytic cleaning system, it is very easy to clean the oven too. This system is effective just at 90 °: thanks to the effect of hydrolysis, the residues are softened and make cleaning easier. Just pour 300 ml of distilled water into the oven cavity and heat it for 30 minutes; at the end of the program, simply rub with a sponge or a cloth to remove dirt residues. Some models also offer a double cleaning system: the hydrolysis and the pyrolytic one.

http://www.candy-domestic.co.uk/en_GB/smart-steam