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We've doubled our production capacity in just under a year

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In the 12 months since we moved into our new building we've made lots of improvements to our production space. Most notable of these has been the fitting a brand new GIS Light Crane System into the hoist preparation area. (Full details below) The decision to fit the system was made for two reasons:

First, we were keen to reduce the amount of manual lifting and handling of hoists for our engineers. Repetitive handling tasks are not only strenuous and potentially dangerous, it's boring work, so we were keen to reduce that aspect of the job for them.

Secondly, we wanted to increase productivity. With so many companies offshoring their production capabilities to countries were labour is cheaper, it was important for us to find a way to stay competitive within the UK market.

The answer for us was automation. Last year we enlisted the help of Shen (Hsuan Hsu), a Student at University of Liverpool Management School completing a Masters in Operations and Supply Chain Management, Shen helped us to audit our processes and find redundancy in our systems. Simple steps such as moving the swivel hooks from one side of the workshop to the other knocked 2 minutes off the production of a hoist. That's 24 minutes a day. Taking this information as a jumping off point, we reorganised our production space and invested in the GIS crane system this time last year. The result has been a doubling our production capacity in just under a year. We have managed to streamline the whole process from prepping to shipping a hoist down to just over 30 minutes. Our hoist department can now prepare and ship 60 hoists a week! That's 300 a month and over 3000 hoists a year.

Needless to say, we're thrilled with the new set up and we're keen to show it off, so if you fancy taking a look at our production facilities or if you're interested in improving your own production capacity with a GIS crane system, let us know - we'll put the kettle on!

For more information on GIS crane systems click here

What we installed:

LIGHT CRANE SYSTEM, SWL 2 x 500kg

1 x Crane Bridge