CIS’ High
Wycombe PPC
had Industry 4.0
technology on
view in June
Shopfl oor Industry 4.0
Carillon Industrial Services (CIS) opened up its High Wycombe Productivity Proving Centre in June for a
special event that had shopfl oor technology for Industry 4.0 at its heart. Andrew Allcock went along and
discovered much more than he was anticipating
CIS (https://is.gd/uzoxin) is a company
of some 40 years standing, with High
Wycombe being one of its ve
locations. Following an MBO in 1996,
managing director Bryan Clover has guided
what was a £900,000 turnover engineers’
merchant operation to become today’s £16
million turnover activity focused on precision
engineering and employing close to 70.
The company’s scope of operation takes
in the supply of workholding, tooling, coolant,
measurement equipment and many other
engineering supplies, applied in a customerfocused,
full-service manner – CIS has 150
tool vending units in customers, for example,
and operates a documented, four-step
‘Product Improvement Process’ approach of
survey, recommend, validate and implement.
It was to underpin this approach that the
High Wycombe Productivity Proving Centre
operation was set up some four years ago
and which boasts a number of machine tools
– Doosan machining centre and lathe, plus a
Grob 5-axis machining centre. Says Clover:
“We needed to do this so as to undertake
INDUSTRY 4.0 & AUTOMATION DOWN TO EARTH DEMONSTRATIONS
real-world tests that don’t interrupt our
customers’ production time. We also need
to know more ourselves, to be able to test
and prove, so that we can go to customers
in a more informed way, documenting
improvement offsite, so they will have
con dence.”
It is all part of a partnership approach
that has seen the company differentiate
itself by “defeating the price ght”, as Clover
puts it, with some 70% of business coming
from its partnership customer base.
“We have everything they need, the whole
bandwidth of product. We are not political;
we give the customer the best solution for
the job. We are never going to be the
cheapest, but we deliver good value,” he
underlines. Clearly successful, it is delivering
year-on-year growth of 12-17%.
Not surprising then, perhaps, that CIS has
acquired an adjacent unit at High Wycombe
that will see its Productivity Proving Centre
grow further, doubling oorspace. Already
sales and the warehouse operations have
moved there, but additional facilities will
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