PECM Issue 38 2019 | Page 170

PROCESS TECHNOLOGIES INNOVATION FROM TITUS TITUS ADDING VALUE TO THE RTA FURNITURE INDUSTRY THROUGH IMPROVED PRODUCTS AND PROCESSES The Titus Group develops, manufactures and sells innovative precision components and solutions that enhance the competitive position of its customers across a wide range of industries. Through innovative product design, expertise in high volume manufacturing and efficient service, the Group helps business partners to improve their productivity and quality while reducing the cost of assembly, manufacturing and allied processes. The precision engineering competence gained in the field of furniture hardware manufacture, which is the Group’s core activity, has now been applied to other areas. These include multipurpose damping technology, tooling and ultrasound fastening techniques, die casting, and automated assembly systems, with applications in diverse industries, such as furniture, home appliances and automotive, as well as medical devices and hardware. The furniture industry in the RTA category has been facing three major challenges over the past ten years: lack of wood mass, simplicity or guaranteeing user assembly friendliness, and flexibility of production processes. To address the problem of thousands of people who consider ready-to-assemble furniture as being time-consuming and complicated to put together, with a lot of opportunities to make mistakes in the course of the assembly process, Titus engineers delivered innovative, out-of-box solution offering a simple approach for tackling furniture assembling. The lack of wood mass is becoming an increasing problem with the growth of the population (market growth). Traditional materials used by the industry such as MFC chipboard, MDF and solid wood will be adjusted in the future. The recycled chipboard is already of great importance for the furniture industry. The result of the recycled chipboard is the quality of the MFC panels themselves. Metal and plastic inserts, poorly prepared chipboard structure (larger particles) and reduced use of adhesives cause a significant reduction in the load capacity of such panels. In addition to the challenges mentioned above, the density of the furniture panels decreases. THE CHALLENGE AND ITS SOLUTION PRODUCT INNOVATION The Titus innovation is intended for use in a large segment of the furniture industry – RTA (Ready to Assemble). This is a furniture industry that provides packaged pre- prepared furniture panels equipped with all furniture fittings (included in the bag) and installation instructions. The end user assembles RTA furniture at home. Usually, connection fittings in such panels do not allow the expected load capacity. Innovative expansion dowel with metal expansion sleeves in new materials is adapted and allows comparable load capacities with dowel connections. Titus FastFit Machine 170 PECM Issue 38