Remaining Competitive Through Continuous Investment
At Hydram, we are well positioned to deliver in the present and are adding additional capacity in preparation for the future.
This includes future proofing and having the latest state-of-the-art plant and equipment to maintain our competitive advantage whilst further improving our quality standards and efficiencies, which supports on time delivery to our varied customer base.
On the back of our recent investment in a new cobot, we spoke to our Operations Director, Lee Goodhall, on our latest state-of-art addition to our 150,000 sq ft facility.
What value does Hydram see in operating the latest equipment and utilising automation?
It’s not always an easy decision when it comes to investing in new equipment or upgrades as it can come with high upfront costs and sometimes operational disruption. But for us, we have found the often-perceived barriers are outweighed when looking at benefits of taking the step to new equipment.
We’re approaching our 50th year and within our workforce retain decades of manufacturing expertise, so we know that modern machinery directly reduces waste, it limits expensive and timely rework – helping to ensure client satisfaction too and it can significantly reduce lead times.
Through upgrading our equipment we’ve been able to handle more complex designs, automate repetitive tasks and most importantly meet rising customer demands for precision and repeatability and flexibility. All of which helps us to remain competitive and provide a full range of subcontract services.
Can you introduce any of the recent equipment you’ve added to the site?
As mentioned, we have invested in a new welding cobot which supports our move towards automation as we look to improve standardisation and improve operational efficiency. The cobot does both things and further increases our weld capacity. Further to this are two new LOEWER grinding machines, which will improve our efficiency further as these are a more modern piece of equipment replacing our older Grind Masters. The LOEWER machines have a higher throughput and provide more precisioned-360° edge rounding.
As part of this upgrade further consideration has also been given to the plant layout, so that our new machines will be optimally positioned to reduce double handling and improve efficiency at our 10kw Trumpf TruLaser 3030, which was installed in the previous financial year.
Following contract wins across our current customer base and with new customers coming onboard we again reviewed our current capacities and decided to invest further in our CNC Section.
This has led to us bringing in additional capacity to future proof the business in the form of a further ST15 lathe, which has a small footprint and delivers high-volume production. As well as a Haas VF-4 milling machine which again is engineered to support high-volume production.
We’re also considering further upgrades to our tube cutting and bending section to enable us to deliver enhanced precision, with a more streamlined workflow, so watch this space.
What are some of the tangible benefits of recent investments?
Bringing in new equipment on to site has meant we have increased our capacity and offering, but it also means we are using the most energy efficient equipment available. This further supports sustainability and improves our operational capability, which in turn supports efficient turn-around of products as expected by our customer base.
The new equipment brings on site flexibility to meet peaks and troughs in demand from our customer base across our operations of laser cutting, punching, pressing, weld, paint and assembly, all with minimal downtime.
What was the ambition at the start of this recent round of investment?
Part of our objectives in the coming year is a bias towards increased automation and having the latest and most efficient plant and equipment offering to provide to our customers. This is so that we can continue to meet enhanced quality standards, deliver on time and bring further flexibility to projects.
Our ambition is to move further towards automation and bring to fruition some of the advantages of reducing cycle times and enhancing our ability to meet large volume orders.
Automation of repetitive, high-volume jobs means that we can reduce bottlenecks whilst improving flow with quick job changeovers. All of which supports improving quality standards with improved consistency, repeatability and reduced process variation.
This will also enable us to improve operator skillsets and bring further job enrichment as we develop our onsite team to new ways of working including programming and inspection.
Furthermore, from a sustainability perspective, the investments have led us to see improved nesting of materials at laser cutting, reduced rework and improved yield from materials.
So, how does all of this fit in with your growth plans?
From a growth perspective, Hydram will benefit from lower manufacturing costs, improved customer satisfaction, enhanced capability from plant, people, and process. Which in turn brings further competitive advantage and improves our market position as the UK’s leading sheet metal fabrication company.
