Case study: TRIUMPH BUSINESS SYSTEMS

Ball bearing system is a ‘triumph’ for Atkin Automation

Steel storage systems and filing cabinet manufacturer Triumph Business Systems(TBS) has been producing high-quality filing products at its Merthyr Tydfil site for over fifty years, and turned to Atkin Automation when it was felt that its slide production line needed to be made more efficient.

TBS has been manufacturing slides for filing cabinets since the 1960s, but these were the traditional wheeled slides, and the company wanted to offer its highly competitive market the improved quality and performance provided by ball bearing slides. Although ball bearing slides were already used in heavier applications, the TBS team had been unable to find a company which could produce these in high volume at a low enough cost. In 1987, a development partnership with a supplier led to the launch of Triumph’s own unique ball bearing slides. The manufacture of these slides, marketed as ‘Superglider’ was based on extremely simple, and now ageing, automation for assembly and labour intensive manual operations for punching forming and finishing.

Atkin Automation has been supplying equipment to TBS since 1978, and so the relationship between the companies was already well established when the decision was made to automate the slide production line. TBS had been looking for a manufacturer to produce a purpose designed system for its needs since 1979, and had been in serious discussion with several overseas companies. TBS Operations Director, Andrew Jackson, explains: “ For many the sheer complexity of the job frightened them away, whilst the costings which we were given by other overseas companies were uneconomic in terms of payback and did not represent a viable investment. However, it appeared that no British company was flexible enough and technically capable to produce what we needed. For a while it seemed that we were not going to be able to find a solution.”

Luckily, Atkin Personnel were in Merthyr Tydfil discussing another machine when they heard of the problem. Andrew Jackson said: “We saw Atkin as a company which supplied high quality coil processing equipment, it simply didn’t come to mind as designing manufacturing solutions.” The extensive automation experience of the Norfolk based company enabled a project team to design the automated slide production line from Triumph’s specifications, working closely with TBS’s production team in the final stages to ensure that the line met with the most stringent of safety measures, whilst performing within the unique requirements of this application.

With an estimated payback period of some twelve months on an investment of approximately £500,000, it is clear that this project has been a huge success. The previous method often resulted in production bottlenecks, meaning that the assembly team had to work overtime in order to meet production targets. The new system has reduced the labour requirement from 40/50 workers over a twenty-four hour period to only six (two per shift), with over 3,200 slides being produced in each 8 hour production cycle, and scrap has been reduced from a high of 6-10% to virtually nil. This is because the Atkin machine alerts the operator if there has been a mistake - for example, a ball bearing missing from the slide, so that the slide can be stripped down and put back through the line. The machine is also linked via modem to the Atkin Automation technical support office in case of any serious problems.

Another benefit is that the new system can produce four variants of the main slide design, simply by the operator calling up different computer programmes, with no tool changes being required. Some unexpected benefits have also been obtained, a greater consistency and a cleaner end product, free from the usual smears of grease used extensively in the previous production process, is further reducing overall manufacturing and assembly costs.

Andrew Jackson is very pleased with the Atkin system. “We knew that our production method could be improved upon, but hadn’t fully appreciated the total impact an automated line would make until Atkin Automation installed the new system. Apart from the punching and forming operations, the machine is assembling 53 separate components for each slide. The concept of all these operations happening at the same time, and at such speed, in such a compact machine is quite amazing. The benefits of the investment are unquestionable. This truly is a spectacular machine.”