The Interview: Sam Fulton, Sales and Marketing Director, Fero talks automation.
What are the benefits of automation? There are a number of immediate benefits to automation. The one that is often sited is cost reduction through the lowering of labour costs. This can be a big driver, however is sometimes not a significant as most people assume. The main benefits that we find are that we are able to produce a highly repeatable, high quality, product quickly to the market. It is very important in a lot of the products that we are producing that they are repeatable. This means that our customers know that they are getting a product that will work for them every time and allow them to work within very tight constraints. This repeatability also ensures that the quality is consistent, even with the best trained labour force there are quality issues that arise from human error and hand producing product. Automation also allows us to produce at much higher speeds than human labour can achieve. Being able to turn orders around and get them back to the customer in short time frames is a huge advantage to any business that has any degree of lean or efficient manufacturing processes. Through automation we are also continuously upskilling our workforce. This is through both retraining to run more complex machinery, and also in understanding some complex lean manufacturing techniques that come with automation and continuous improvement. And does automation mean that workers can be more productive? Yes, there are a number of reasons why automation enables staff to be more productive. The most basic is that anyone using machinery can complete a job much faster. Machines are more accurate, tire less and can complete simple actions much faster than humans. Where we tend to find we get real productivity gains is when an operator is able to manage […]