Yorkshire-based Contract Production Ltd has increased its capacity by 400% virtually overnight thanks to a £250,000 investment in new technology.
Contract Production manufactures a range of sub-contract electronic products and printed circuit board assemblies for a wide variety of industries. This can be one-off prototypes, up to volumes in their 10,000’s. A recent investment and installation of an AM100 Panasonic Pick and Place line has enabled the company to increase its output by an astonishing 400%.
The new production line populates printed circuit boards and can place a staggering 30,000 components per hour, blowing away previous capacity limits.
The investment has already led to CPL has won its largest ever customer order, only weeks after investing in new technology that made the deal possible. The new capacity on its manufacturing floor helped clinch the six-figure contract to supply more than 1000 sets of circuit boards for an overseas customer. It is hoped the contract fulfilment to stiff deadlines will lead to even larger, follow on orders.
“This essentially, means that we now measure productivity in seconds not minutes,” said Managing Director Simon Norris. “Thanks to the new production line we have added an extra 30-40 weeks of working capacity to the business annually; In time, that could see our work force go from 20 employees to around 50-60 which will be great news for the area.”
The new pick and place machine was manufactured in the Far East and shipped to the manufacturing base in Pickering. The system has effectively streamlined the company’s whole process, taking a bare printed circuit board, populating it and producing an inspected product at the end of the line.
“Obviously, the speed depends on the complexity of the circuit board or product we are producing,” said Simon.
He added: “There has been a lot of talk about the UK’s stagnating productivity levels but this investment into Contract Productions shows there is opportunity and we can now deliver on much larger orders with improved turnaround for our customers that we could only dream of a few weeks ago. It is a major leap forward technology-wise and we are all very excited about the possibilities this brings for the business and our customers.”
As well as the larger orders going into the hundreds of thousands Contract Production also produces one-off prototypes or low rate production runs for clients – often hand-placed – for new products yet to go to market. These can be anything that requires circuit boards, from GPS tracking devices to wind turbines, cameras to measuring instrumentation for deep sea oil drilling rigs.
The Contract Production website can be found at: https://contract-production.co.uk. The team is also attending the WNIE (What’s New in Electronics) Show in September and can be visited on Stand F62.
