As the brand lead at Phoenix Dison Tec, how have you managed to steer your firm uniquely and allow it to thrive despite pandemic concerns?
As a company that has seen its fair shares of highs and lows over the past 22 years since its establishment, the pandemic was no different, nonetheless there were several challenges that had to be addressed and dealt with appropriately. As the CEO of the Phoenix Group of Companies (Phoenix being the umbrella brand for companies that we operate), it was my duty to steer my firm towards the shore. One of our main obstacles was the budget we had to walk with, yet, amidst this situation all employees were paid their full wages with no cut backs in any manner, and all our employees were thoroughly trained on how to deal with the new rules and regulations regarding safety for Covid-19. However, because of the pandemic, many markets across various industries faced a severe down slope and we were on the same slope ourselves, but because we are in the field of producing high-quality manufacturing machines. We figured the best cause of action would be getting involved with those businesses and industries that were standing up against Covid-19.
We therefore ventured into manufacturing machines that would produce hand sanitisers, masks, and more such related products. This not only allowed us to thrive during the worst of times at the beginning of the pandemic but also helped us get into a new market. We are grateful that the UAE Government supports businesses like ours and others, despite the hardship the country faced during the pandemic.
CSR is a big part of Dison Tec’s work culture. How have you helped by giving back to the community?
One of the many ways Phoenix Dison Tec has given back to the community is by providing necessary and positive guidance when dealing with SMEs and those who are unemployed but can initiate production on a product from the comfort of their homes.
Many of the SMEs that approached us only have an in-depth knowledge about their own product and know nothing on what to purchase when it comes to filling, packaging, weighing and many such processing equipment.
Apart from catering to their needs and custom-designing machines to fit their budgets, we also introduce these types of businesses to market to help them get a head start so that they can thrive in several such competitive markets.
We feel humble in helping those in need when we are handed the opportunity to do so and are more than happy to participate in these initiatives that help us give back to the community.
The UAE is on the cusp of becoming a manufacturing hub for the region, even as manufacturing is experiencing an evolutionary phase globally. How is the country aligning itself to a new world order in this regard and where do you see Dison Tec in the picture?
The UAE has seen rapid development in many of its sectors, and I think that the manufacturing sector of this country has garrisoned a healthy part of growth in its GDP, which in turn is fruitful as the country can self-sustain.
The UAE manufacturing hub is vast and also diverse, and will only go up because it is an everlasting and evolving industry that also creates several job opportunities for Emiratis as well as expat citizens.
Here at Dison Tec we consider ourselves blessed that we are part of such an evolutionary industry and think that we have all the tools required to help others and ourselves in shaping this manufacturing industry and engender a sophisticated pathway to error-free manufacturing machines.
Dison Tec has scripted a success story more than two decades in the making. What in your eyes are the brand’s most noteworthy accomplishments?
Dison Tec is a company that has crossed several milestones that I am proud of. However, the most noteworthy accomplishment in my view is from several years ago, when during my early days as we just started off with the business, I invented something we called the magic stove, from scratch. It was marvelous and worked purely on heat induction and had no use of actual gas.
Later, as the years passed, the manufacturing industry had begun to rapidly develop and with it, so did we, after scrupulous designing of a system to be ten folds more accurate than the universally used liquid measuring systems, when we introduced flow metre technology that we incorporate in our machinery to this day for high-precision filling of liquids.
Furthermore, while Dison Tec received several awards for serving various sectors in the packaging industry, a couple of our best accolades include the Business Leaders Award in London and the Humanitarian Tolerance Award, received here in the UAE.
Packaging and processing machinery will evolve as the needs of the industry evolve. How do you see the evolution of this sector in the next decade and is Dison Tec future ready to meet any unique needs that may arise as a result of this evolution?
I’d like to think that no one is exactly future ready, so we can consider this to be more of a challenge or obstacle in our way, depending on the situation. In the past, the requirement of manufacturing machines and the products being manufactured on those machines were simple because for starters the customer had an idea about what it exactly was that they needed considering how simple the industry was back then. However, this is not the case today.
One of the hurdles we constantly run into is that businesses and the individual customers that come to us now are baffled with how many different types of machines can carry out the same function while being custom designed to have their own strengths.
So we, as the people who sell these manufacturing machines aid in full-end-solution set-ups from the start (the initial raw material itself depending on the product) till the end (the finished shelf-ready product for sale). Needless to say, as the industry evolves, we too have always successfully pushed ourselves to evolve with market needs and upgrade our designs and strategies to be successful and endeavour to be a seemingly useful entity to those requiring our services.
What is the brand’s expansion strategy, do you have something in place that tackles a post-Covid world scenario?
The pandemic essentially was bad news, certainly, but we decided that this was the perfect time for our planned-out expansion strategy. Prior to the pandemic we were very occupied with business as usual, which did not give us enough room for the time we needed to carry out the expansion we had hoped for.
However, since the initial months of the pandemic were cold for the market, we used this to our benefit and began work on expanding our business by setting up new showrooms, offices and training centres for our staff, along with more service departments for any machine related issues.
I have pondered a lot about this sort of scenario and the way I see it, we are already advancing in the technological aspect of our business and we love to help other businesses grow with us. One of the new systems we are currently working on is the ability to remotely operate our manufacturing machines keeping everything on a highly robotic foundation with little to no human involvement, from the comfort of our homes.
Now, while this sounds fictional, cameras are already working in such a fashion, and we too are developing such a system with the help of an HUI system (Human User Interface) interlinked with an AI (Artificial Intelligence) that helps avoid common machine-based errors and human-hazard errors and ensuring a safe environment. This not only creates a hygienic work space both in the current and post-Covid world scenario but also reduces the need to waste capital on the generic ways of using excessive labour to carry out tasks such as packaging hundreds of thousands of packets per day.
Here at the Phoenix Group of Companies (Dison Tec, Inpack Machineries, Phoenix Machineries, Inpack Industries, etc.) we believe that everything happens for a reason, which presents two sides, the good and the bad. How we interpret and what we do with it is on us and every individual can achieve great things if they focus on the positive aspect of every scenario.
