All the right moves

, but it has also seen business levels rise month on month and a number of brand new products unleashed into the marketplace at the recent Euroblech event held in Hannover. Dave Tudor reports.

Bystronic's evolutionary journey in the UK begins way back in 1910 with Chard, Somerset-based engineering company FJ Edwards – the company where Bystronic's current managing director, David Larcombe served his apprenticeship in 1978. Fast forwarding to 1985 Pearson machine tools was acquired by FJ Edwards to become Edwards Pearson. In 1987 Edwards Pearson was acquired by pressbrake specialist Beyeler and in 1989, Pullmax become agents for Bystronic.

The new millennium saw a number of further acquisitions. In 2002 Bystronic acquired Beyeler/Edwards Pearson and three years later in 2005, Bystronic acquired the sales and service company Pullmax UK with both companies merging to form Bystronic UK.

However, whilst the merger brought many benefits in terms of product rationalisation, logistically it was far from ideal. Then, the cutting division of the company incorporating laser and waterjet technologies was headquartered in Leeds, with the bending division located in Chard – geographically over 250 miles apart.

This situation was rectified during early in 2010 when, as well as being Edward Pearson's centenary year, a new headquarters in Coventry was officially opened by Bystronic's CEO Ferdi Tongi and MTA president, Bob Hunt.

“Coventry is an ideal location for us,” Mr Larcombe explains. “It's easily accessible via the main UK motorways which means we're much closer to our customers. Equally as important however is the fact that having all our services centrally located means we can provide the best service levels possible to our customers.”

Pooling of resources

Bystronic employs 63 members of staff in the UK with 33 multi-skilled field technicians (23 Laser and Waterjet specialists; and 10 pressbrake engineers) permanently on the road dealing directly with customers all over the UK and Ireland. The new premises occupies 2,200m² of floor space with 560m² dedicated to tooling and machine spares and consumables and 1,000m² for demonstration and training purposes. On show at all times is a wide assortment of systems from the company's three product groups – laser cutting, waterjet cutting and bending as well as a computer suite for training customers in the use of Bystronic's Bysoft CAD/CAM software.
Mr Larcombe believes that the pooling and amalgamation of resources into a single site has resulted in greatly enhanced levels of customer service and communication. “Perhaps predictably, the way we were set-up before with facilities in Chard and Leeds meant that there was something of a north/south divide,” he recalls. “We're very much a unified company now and have invested significant resource into updating our communications systems so that we can ultimately serve our customers better.”
On that last point, it's plain to see that effective communication, service and support rank pretty high on Mr Larcombe's priority list, and this is reaping benefits with the company enjoying many longstanding relationships with customers and high levels of repeat business.

Support … and then some

There are three levels of flexible service packages available: 2 Star, 3 Star and 4 Star depending on requirements (see box out). Customer Helpline and service desks are open for business Monday to Friday from 7am to 6pm and on Saturdays from 8am to 2pm. However because problems in the real world don't follow a 9-5 timetable, there's an optional 24/7 telephone helpline available as well as remote diagnostics capability and applications support.

“We have three dedicated engineers covering the Helpline, via a cascading telephone system, in the case of busy phones customers who have a problem will be able to talk to a real person rather than an automated recording or answer phone. Even out of hours customers who have a problem are able to talk to a hotline engineer. There is a small premium for this service but it's well worth it for operations that simply can't afford any downtime. Over 50% of the calls we get however can be resolved over the phone.”

Large LCD screens adorn the office area displaying customer call logs and the location of service engineers at any given moment. Via GPS, this enables Bystronic to schedule service visits effectively. If a service call comes in from a customer and there's an engineer nearby, he can drop in and get the problem resolved. All engineers have PDAs which link in to the central system in Coventry so information is always current, accurate and in real time – including any historic data relating to a particular customer. A colour coding system streamlines the operation even further – making ‘at a glance' information readily available.

Forward with fibre

Business levels for Bystronic have been particularly healthy in recent months. June and July saw sales double the forecasted figures and with a number of high profile projects coming to fruition in the coming months, Bystronic is going to be pretty busy up to the end of the year and beyond.

From a product perspective it's been all systems go too. At the recent Euroblech exhibition that took place in Hannover, Germany, a number of new innovations made their debuts.
Bystronic unveiled its first ever laser cutting system equipped with a fibre laser – the BySprint Fiber 3015 with the 2kW Fiber 2000 laser source. A machine will be available for demonstration at the Coventry facility early in 2011.

“The main benefits of a fibre system over a CO₂ machine are more speed, efficiency and precision for sheets up to 4mm,” Mr Larcombe states. “A fibre-based machine will use about a third of the power of a CO₂ laser-based system and for thin sheet material it can cut at speeds of around 30m/minute.”

The system is also flexible: in addition to steel, stainless steel and aluminium, non-ferrous metals such as copper and brass can also be cut with reliability and precision. “For the foreseeable future I can't see fibre technology taking over from CO₂-based processing,” Mr Larcombe observes, “but on thin materials in terms of efficiency, accuracy and its green environmental footprint, it's hard to beat.”

The system's design and CNC capability ensures high dynamics and fast processing times.

Show stoppers

On the pressbrake side, Bystronic has introduced Energy Saver – a system designed to provide lower energy consumption, reduced machine noise and less heat loss. As soon as the Press beam has reached upper dead centre following a bending operation, the main pressbrake motor is automatically switched off until the next bending process begins.

This has no effect on the operating procedure and process speed remains unaffected – however up to third of the energy used by a conventional pressbrake can be saved. A standard feature on the on the Xpert 60 to 320 Tonne range, the system in quiet in operation and produces no unnecessary heat loss.

With a view to increasing productivity, Bystronic exhibited a fully automated laser cell at Euroblech. According to Mr Larcombe, many of Bystronic's customers are considering automation as a means of competing on more efficiently in the global marketplace. “We've always been strong on automation but the problem is that fully automating a process can be prohibitively expensive for smaller businesses. At Euroblech we introduced a more cost-effective solution via the BySpeed Pro, ByTrans Extended and BySort fully integrated laser cell. We believe that the 20% additional cost that the automation equipment incurs is fully justified by potential productivity gains of up to 60% in applicable manufacturing environments.”

The heart of the cell is formed by the new BySpeed Pro 3015 laser cutting system that can be supplied either with the ByLaser 4400 (4.4kW) or the ByLaser 6000 (6kW) as the laser source. Equipped as standard with a new cutting head, additional options include an automatic lens cassette changer and automatic nozzle changer to ensure that the beam that hits the metal sheet is always optimally focused.

The ByTrans system permits the automatic loading and unloading of the shuttle table and additionally features one (ByTrans) or two (ByTrans Extended) cassettes for storing material or returned cut sheets. The automation solutions are further complemented by the BySort 3015. With BySort, the cut parts are automatically removed from the cut sheet, sorted and stacked – effectively negating the need for manual intervention. This ensures that parts are not damaged through transportation via alternative methods such as forklift. A further benefit is that BySort can be operated from the machine's operating console.

Providing a brand new spin on waterjet technology, the new Microwaterjet system is used for producing small precision parts over a total working area of 1,000mm by 600mm. Even bar with a width of 0.2mm can be produced with surface finished up to N6 with a reproducible tolerance of ±0.01mm. According to Bystronic, typical fields of application are medical, watchmaking, automotive and aerospace.

Bystronic currently has over 800 customers on service contracts. These are the packages available:

2 Star
• Priority call out
• 10% discount on spares
• Preventative maintenance visit every 2,000 hours
• Access to telephone helpdesk during office hours

3 Star
• Priority call-out
• 10% discount on spares
• Preventative maintenance visit every 2,000 hours
• Access to telephone helpdesk during office hours
• Two call out visits to unplanned downtime

4 Star
• Priority call out
• 10% discount on spares
• Preventative maintenance visit every 2,000 hours
• Access to telephone helpdesk during office hours
• All callouts covered for unplanned downtime Bystronic
www.bystronic.co.uk