B-Loony Ltd is a UK SME manufacturer of bespoke promotional products such as burger flags, bunting and balloons, predominantly for high-street brands. Evolving market demands and rising labour costs meant B-Loony needed to significantly increase productivity and efficiency, in order to remain competitive in both the UK market and abroad. Strong demand and short lead times for specific products lines also left B-Loony under pressure to come up with a solution that would allow employees to work faster and to be more reactive to customer demands.
By deploying five UR3 cobots B-Loony has been able to find a solution to these problems. Due the machines flexibility and safety functions, the cobots have been able to slot into the company’s current factory floor with minimal disturbance. The cobots have been to do a range of tasks that human operators previously carried out by hand and can handle the most routine and repetitive elements of these tasks, freeing up staff to focus on higher value activities such as quality control.
B-Loony’s automation programme has enabled the business to become more competitive. For example, they have been able to increase burger flag production by 5000% and have created over 1,200 miles of bunting in just one year – that’s enough bunting to stretch from London to Casablanca. As well as this, the company was able to achieve payback within just nine months.
