Over the past several months Counterline has maintained its policy of capital investment in new machinery.
We have now secured a new punching machine and we eagerly await its installation, this will not only have benefits from the obvious increased production capacities from having two machines but the new machine has numerous additional capabilities above our existing punch, faster punching of parts, increased material usage reducing costs, ability to tap holes etc, long term this will ultimately help Counterline maintain its competitive edge.
The introduction of three new CNC controlled multi-axis state of the art press brakes early last year continues to give the desired benefits, increased productivity, greater flexibility, faster throughput of customers orders, reduced operational costs and improved quality.
The superior functionality of the software and controllers on these new machines has enabled the machine line operators to build up a database of folded parts allowing a much faster throughput of parts, repeatability, quality and less waste with minimal programming times these benefits are all now being realised.
To maintain maximum flexibility we now have a dedicated Bespoke press brake operator. This has released all other operators to concentrate solely on standard folded parts, giving much faster throughput of parts.
Machine line operators are all encouraged, trained and supported in covering other areas of production. We now have a number of operators that have cross-functional skills. This has given the machine line team an unprecedented level of versatility that not only helps production but has also given individuals a greater sense of pride and team spirit.
Counterline not only invests in new machinery, we consider training and development to be a core requirement to our long term success. This is born out in the training and development of existing and new employees and also the introduction of apprenticeship schemes.
To further strengthen the machine line team we now have a trainee punch programmer, Michael Tierney. Mike’s training has been specifically targeted to coincide with the introduction of the new punch, however he has already made a significant impact on productivity improvements and with this we are now moving towards putting more bespoke hand made parts through the machine line.
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