As we venture into the unknown of another financial year, the UK ready’s itself for what we hope to be a fruitful trading year in all sectors. As we see restrictions decreased, we hope that this will enable the travel, tourism and hospitality trades to regain and recover from their most difficult period in the modern era. This in turn will assist the engineering world as transport will once again be used to the frequency that it did before march 2020. The Aerospace sector will start to re-ignite as will the automotive industry which will in turn trigger the oil and gas industry etc. People will travel, shop, eat out and most importantly spend again. I have lost count of the number of times I have said the phrase we can see light at the end of tunnel but I sincerely hope that this is the last time I do regarding the coronavirus pandemic. It’s time to try and build again both in business and in life.
Due to the pandemic, Brexit was somewhat overlooked, but it would appear now, that we are starting see the consequences as staffing levels are becoming hard to obtain for manual assembly and production roles across the UK. Although this provides us with a problem in the short term, there is a long-term solution that has never had a stronger case than today. That solution is Automation.
Many people see automation as an all singing and dancing commodity that involve little if any input from human beings, and whilst this is the case in some applications, there are so many levels of automation that can be applied to improve efficiencies across all manufacturing sectors. Whether you are able to jump into full automation or even dip your toe into basic automation, now is the time to start exploring your options. There are many simple solutions available that, step by step can improve the throughput and or quality as well as decreasing health and safety risks around a production environment.
Automation doesn’t cost as much as you think, typically, a return on investment can be satisfied between 2-5 years (sometimes even sooner) dependant on your manufacturing quantities. Not only that, adaptable automation doesn’t just work for one product. Directech QM-Systems have been designing systems that can take multiple products on single lines for years. This means that you may be able to spread the ROI across multiple products thus reducing the payback period.
Clearly there are limitations, after all physics has its boundaries, but it is far more flexible than it ever has been before. Now is the time to automate to get a march on your competitors, increase throughput and improve profitability, so please don’t hesitate to call us here at Directech QM-Systems and we will happily take a look at your production or testing environment and suggest areas that we could see significant gains.
Time frames for a bespoke solution can be anywhere from 20-52 weeks depending on the size and task, so don’t put it to the back of the pile. Explore the opportunity now.
Feel free to call us on 01905 621 882 and we will be happy to support.
