From Savile Row suits to luxury cars, kitchen designs to heat exchangers, everyone knows the meaning of terms like bespoke and custom-made: something that is commissioned to a particular specification or made for a particular customer. However, while many equipment suppliers will claim to offer custom-made solutions, just how bespoke are they really?
Rest assured that when it comes to heat transfer, every system and solution designed by HRS Heat Exchangers is completely bespoke. “Custom-made solutions and products are our niche,” says Matt Hale, HRS’ Global Key Account Director. “If a client has a specific requirement in terms of capacity, component choice or a need to locate the system within a particular part of their production facility, we will absolutely work to accommodate their needs.” He compares it to buying a luxury car from one manufacturer but asking for it to be fitted with the wheels from another make. “While we have preferred suppliers that we routinely use, we are quite happy to fit other components if requested,” adds Matt.
Fully flexible solutions
Over the years this flexibility has seen HRS Heat Exchangers add to its portfolio of thermal processing systems, from pasteurisers and sterilisers, through to evaporators, aseptic fillers, dehumidifiers, re-melters and more. Even when based around one of HRS’s standard heat exchanger types, aspects such as size, heat transfer, pressure drop, orientation and more will be carefully calculated for each individual job, meaning no two units are ever the same.
It is this flexibility that brings many clients to HRS in the first place, and which leads to the long-term relationship the company maintains with many of them going forward. Tailoring systems to meet specific briefs also ensures they are designed with efficiency in mind from the outset, both in terms of operational energy efficiency, but also material utilisation and cost.
“There are numerous benefits for our clients from this kind of approach,” continues Matt. “Not least, the fact that you aren’t paying for features you haven’t specified or don’t need. It also means you’ll get a solution which is designed to fit into your existing lines in terms of both physical size and connections. You shouldn’t have to adapt your equipment or processes beyond what is normally expected to facilitate the installation of a new system, but that is precisely what some suppliers seem to expect from their customers.”
Complete customisation
Marcos Antonio Alarcón González is HRS’ Operations Director. He explains that it can be difficult for larger suppliers to offer the same levels of flexibility as HRS; as a result, they can be reluctant to move away from standard products.
“Our great advantage is that all our manufacturing, everything we do, is customised,” he explains. “If a client needs to pasteurise 8,000 kg of product per hour, we will supply them with a unit to do just that. Not one unit to pasteurise 10,000 kg or two 5,000 kg units, just because they happen to be what we manufacture. Instead, we adapt our designs to each client, even splitting and interconnecting modules in different locations if necessary.”
The flexibility offered by HRS also means that delivery times are often shorter than the industry standard, even if this requires some forward planning in terms of external components, such as pumps and control systems.
“We try to overcome delays with third-party suppliers by pre-ordering components so we can meet our overall target timescales for a project,” explains Marcos. “Once the design drawings are complete, we produce a materials list, which goes to the purchase department who buy all the components necessary, which are then delivered directly to the workshop with the drawings ready for manufacturing. To make things smooth for ourselves and the customer, every system is assigned a project manager from our engineering department who has ultimate responsibility, including budget, delivery, timescales, testing, etc.”
Choosing the best suppliers
Where there are multiple suppliers for a particular component or piece of equipment, HRS Heat Exchangers analyse all the factors associated with the purchasing decision; not just price, but also availability and delivery timescale, to ensure they get the right item from the right source.
“Each customer can recommend or directly ask for a particular brand of component or certain materials. As a manufacturer, this can create headaches for us, but it is also one of our major selling points,” acknowledges Marcos. “Nearly every order is different to what we have done before, and these challenges and the need for creativity are what our engineers thrive on.
“Occasionally we need to modify our manufacturing process to accommodate such requests, but this also means we are continually analysing what we do and how we do it, tweaking here and there and continuously improving both our products and our systems. To be this flexible, we have to be extremely adaptable.”
However it is this flexibility, and the challenge it creates for the HRS team, which ensures their clients continue to get exactly what they need from their heat transfer systems. Whether it is efficiently handling challenging products in the environmental sector or meeting the highest standards of hygiene and traceability for food or pharma products, HRS will continue to create bespoke solutions for its clients around the world to ensure they get the right system for their needs at the first time of gasking.
