JANUARY 2019 AUTOMATION
industrial revolutions have taken years, if not
decades, to be fully realised,” Sands explains.
“With the fourth one, people are fretting because
we’ve not reached the peak of Industry 4.0 yet.
It’s been fewer than ten years! We’ve barely
touched the surface of what’s possible, but that’s
not to say there aren’t plenty of things that
companies can be doing now to prepare. Building
your understanding of technology and getting
shopfl oor workers on board with the change are
the things that will take the most time.”
A board-level problem?
The main reason for the slow uptake of Industry
4.0, though, may not be down to shopfl oor
buy-in, or understanding the technology, or
even cost. It may be more fundamental than
that – boiling down to the way companies are
run at a board level. “Motivation to innovate can
diff er between cultures,” says Sands. “For a lot
of UK companies, the main aim is to provide a
SME sees productivity balloon with cobots
For SME manufacturer B-Loony,
technology has helped boost productivity
and effi ciency at its site in Chesham.
As a manufacturer of ‘bespoke
promotional products’ – burger fl ags,
bunting and balloons – the company was
struggling under the weight of strong
demand and relatively short lead times, as
well as a changing market and everincreasing
labour costs. B-Loony hierarchy
was therefore keen to fi nd a way of
improving employee effi ciency and react
to customer demands.
As each job is highly customised, with
quantities ranging from as little as 250 up
to as many as two million products per
order, fl exibility and scalability was also of
the utmost importance.
Seeking inspiration, B-Loony’s
operations director James Clephan visited
a manufacturing exhibition, where he fi rst
encountered cobots. “We don’t have the
luxury of unlimited space in our
production facility, so incorporating
industrial robots, caging or safety guarding
is diffi cult,” he explains. “However, I could
instantly picture how the cobots would
slot seamlessly into our operations.”
Starting out with one UR3 cobot, from
Universal Robots, and quickly purchasing
fi ve more, B-Loony has deployed the
cobots to do a range of tasks that human
operators previously carried out by hand.
Employees now work closely alongside
and supervise up to four cobots at a time,
carrying out tasks such as blowing up
balloons, sewing bunting together and
assembling food-fl ags. The cobots have
freed up staff to focus on higher-value
activities such as quality control.
The ease and fl exibility of the cobots
boosted productivity, allowing B-Loony to
increase output and cut the average cost
of each item produced. “Despite rising
infl ation and labour costs, investing in
robotics and automation has made us
more effi cient,” states Clephan.
Another unanticipated benefi t of the
cobots has been the ability to redeploy
them at short notice when circumstances
change. “The product line the cobots were
initially brought in for was discontinued,
but we simply re-programmed the cobots
and have them up and running elsewhere
around the site, future-proofi ng the
investment,” Clephan explains.
With the help of automation, B-Loony
has increased output of its highly popular
gourmet food fl ags by over 5000%, from
250,000 to 15 million per annum,
signifi cantly increasing its market share.
This increased productivity has resulted
in B-Loony achieving a payback period of
just nine months for its initial investments.
Through economies of scale it anticipates
future payback to be just six months.
return on investment for their
shareholders. On the other
hand, German companies exist
to sustain the long-term future
of the organisation. To do that,
they obviously have to make a
profi t, but the immediate RoI
isn’t the be-all and end-all.
They are willing to invest in the
long-term to ensure success
and sustainability.”
Perhaps, then, the UK’s
relative reluctance to fully
embrace Industry 4.0 is
something that will never
be combatted. While some
companies (see case study)
are seeing real and signifi cant
benefi ts from even basic
automation, for others the
idea of Industry 4.0 is one that
brings people out in a cold
sweat. It’s often the larger,
less agile companies that are
struggling to see the benefi ts
of automation. As Sands
concludes, though, these are
the organisations that will be
the ones to turn the tide. “We
are beginning to see larger
companies specifying ‘Industry
4.0’ technologies in their new
production lines. That has only
started happening in the past
year or two, and is starting to
have an impact on OEMs and
the wider supply chain. Once
these ‘big boys’ start investing
and demonstrating tangible
results, smaller companies have
to start following, or they will
fall even further behind.”
(Above) B-Loony
is reaping the
rewards of
automation
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