Our Projects

Manual tasks always have a high risk of causing quality issues; even in the best-case scenario human inspection is only 80% effective. This project involved eighty manual assembly benches producing high complexity products without the ability to introduce hard quality checks. We led the development and introduction of a system capable of catching greater than 99.9% of failures which removed all targeted complaints about poor quality. This project was able to remove visual inspections, improve quality, and introduce Industry 4.0 practices.

COVID-19 introduced a new challenge for providing support without the ability to physically be there. During this time, we remotely supported a factory in the USA without stepping foot in the plant. We adapted our process to be completed by localised engineers and embraced new technologies such as Microsoft HoloLens and IoT Cameras to allow us "see" the line. As a result, we were able to help the factory achieve a 55% improvement in OEE, all from 4,000 miles away.

It isn't uncommon for teams to be spread out across a country or even several continents, and managing a global team presents a range of challenges for managers. In this project, we created new tools to allow the tracking of resources across sites in the UK, EU, USA and China to ensure teams were not over-loaded and the resources were allocated where they were needed. This allowed us to get the most out of existing resources and plan for expanding the team where required.

Throughout our careers, we have worked with a variety of OEMs and Tier 1 automotive suppliers to introduce both simple and complex production lines for their products. Projects ran from design and prototyping through to the start of production and handover. These customers included a range of major automotive OEMs and many prominent Tier 1 suppliers.

A backup to preventing quality defects is to make sure that, when parts aren't up to scratch, you can reuse as much of the part as possible. In this project the business needed an efficient method of recovering components from a rejected part which would ensure they could be reused; without adding a risk of further quality concerns. The end result was a line capable of recovering all high-value components and preparing the scrap material for reuse with less than 5% of the previously-rejected material going to waste. A huge saving!

Engaging with the Industry 4.0 movement will yield extraordinary benefits for manufacturers. In this project, we implemented a system to accommodate the building and collection of data for over 250 unique products across more than 30 production stations. The solution was able to digitise paperwork and present operators with up-to-date production information, whilst allowing engineers to conduct remote maintenance and access historical build data on all products. This provided the ability to examine past issues in detail by giving far greater access to data than had previously been possible through the existing OEE system. This is just the beginning of what Industry 4.0 can achieve.

Once an Industry 4.0 system is in place it is common for a business to start looking at ways to expand their system to improve ease of use or to support new products or processes. In this example, we were incorporating a new traceability concept into an existing Industry 4.0 solution. This involved designing new processes to capture suitable data and form the connections between the physical product and the range of data related to it. We provided the business with a robust system design and an estimated cost for the implementation with a supplier on board to support the rollout.