MSC’s new Technology Centre shines a light on efficient manufacturing

MSC Industrial Supply Co. UK (MSC) has just opened a new Technology Centre intended to assist the industry’s engineering requirements and promote the latest innovations in manufacturing. Ed Hill visited the new facility to find out more.

Like any company, being able to offer your customers something that provides added value and fulfils a need to enable them to benefit from continued success has to be appealing.

So, it’s no surprise that MSC – which has a long-proven record of supplying and supporting the metalworking and MRO sectors with products from more than 500 brands – is always keen to find innovative ways to reach out to its customer base and deliver useful engineering solutions.

Hence the arrival of the company’s gleaming new Technology Centre based at its Wednesbury facility in the West Midlands, which opened in January. In an age when technical and technological developments in manufacturing seem to be coming at an ever-increasing rate, the centre’s unique selling point is not only to help MSC customers navigate through their day-to-day manufacturing and engineering challenges, but also guide them on the steps towards a more digitalised and efficient form of production.

Matthew Garbett, technology centre manager at MSC, who has been responsible for accumulating its machining and software facilities, begins: “Concepts like Industry 4.0 or the Smart Factory can seem a bit daunting to our customers initially, so we wanted to show them in a practical way the advantages they can bring and also demonstrate that adopting these new and improved working practices doesn’t have to be done all at once.

“It can be a step-by-step process and they can take on as much or as little as they want in a way and time that suits them. For example, a first step could be installing our vending inventory management system.”

Real-world advances

MSC has consciously selected metalworking equipment that replicates what can be found on the vast majority of customers’ shopfloors but with new advances that will be part of the factory of the future, such as fully integrated systems that streamline the production process, optimise staff functions and workloads and eliminate human error or the ‘digital thread’ as the company describes it.

“We want to promote technology improvements that are easily achievable for many of our customers," Mr Garbett says. “That’s why much of the technology here consists of add-ons or flexible modules that they can take on and scale up as and when they are able to do so.

“We are trying to help them to get the best out of the equipment that they already have without making huge additional capital investments into their business. There are modifications that you can make to existing equipment and processes that you can undertake that mean you don’t have to purchase the very latest high-end 5-axis CNC machine tool, for example, to achieve an outcome in production that you need.”

The metalworking inventory at MSC’s new Technology Centre includes two Colchester CNC machines: a Typhoon L65M lathe and a Storm 1050 VMC, with a bolt-on Detron 4/5-axis table, and a range of auxiliary equipment, including a Colchester Laser Marker, Evoset tool pre-setter, Bilz heat shrink toolholding machine, Ultimaker 3D printer and MSC’s own ControlPoint inventory management solution and Millmax service.

The centre also makes use of Autodesk Fusion 360 cloud-based CAD/CAM and CGTech Vericut collision avoidance software. To demonstrate Smart Factory advances, these elements are integrated together by an Advanced Tool Management Solution (ATMS) which captures and communicates relevant data and insights in the production process and can be shared to demonstrate repeatable best practice.

Lessening the load

The facility will mainly be used to help MSC customers prove out trials of cutting strategies and tooling options for new product introductions (NPI) and to help them make parts more efficiently and profitably after referrals from the company’s field engineers, who regularly visit manufacturers at their workshops. This is another aspect of the centre that provides a major benefit for MSC customers.

“We realised that when we visited companies to talk about new products, carry out trials or talk to them about best practice, that could impact their production,” Mr Garbett explains. “If we carry out a tooling trial at their site it means taking a machine out of regular production. By having our own Technology Centre, we can take that problem away from them and carry out the investigation work here.”

Even-handed advice

As a national metalworking supplier with more than 120,000 products available, MSC is often one of the first suppliers to learn about the new technological developments in metalworking. The company can  also provide impartial recommendations as it has no affiliation to a particular brand or OEM.

The Technology Centre will also act as a useful benchmarking facility for MSC to carry out its own research and data gathering on the metalcutting products it stocks and supplies.

“From our perspective, when we are tendering for work, it will really help demonstrate our technical ability and means when we suggest a solution to a customer, we have our own data to back it up that’s proven here. Whatever knowledge and experience we learn about the products we supply; we can pass on to the customer,” Mr Garbett says.

Due to its prominence as a leading supplier of metalworking, safety and MRO products, available for next working day delivery, MSC has found that its partner suppliers have been keen to buy into the concept behind the new facility.

“There are strengths and weaknesses in all product portfolios – we just want to identify the best solutions for our customers given a specific application,” Mr Garbett comments. “By working closely with the range of partners we have, we can provide that best solution, so it’s been refreshing to get a positive response from them about the centre too. If we help our customers to be successful then in turn, not only does that help us, it helps our suppliers as well.”

Dave Darby, managing director of MSC Industrial Supply Co, adds: “We’re hugely grateful to our partners who showcase much of their equipment in this facility. It demonstrates the faith they have in us and that we are truly recognised as an engineering-based metalworking distributor; it also illustrates that we all acknowledge the market demand for this kind of support, especially in an era when there is such a premium put on high value engineering skills.”

Future-proofed facility

However, for MSC this is only the start of the development of the Technology Centre and the solutions-based support it is increasingly providing for customers, which has also seen it significantly strengthen its field engineer numbers in recent years to offer support.

There are plans and capacity at the new facility for more machine tools and additional manufacturing equipment, automation, software solutions, and more, and the option to hold open days and use the space for training and education. 

Feedback from companies who have already visited the centre and looked at the technology that can improve and streamline their manufacturing operations has also been very positive.

“You have to appeal to customers across all the tiers in the supply chain because as we know if Tier 1 suppliers are adopting these new technologies, sooner or later, they will demand it from their suppliers too,” Mr Garbett asserts.

“It’s been really exciting researching new innovations that are being developed in manufacturing and being in the position to show them to our customers, and also to invite them here to a facility like this because they can physically see what is available and what we can offer. It's not just a glitzy showroom – it’s a modern engineering resource where I can run equipment, prove out processes and keep in touch with the latest innovations in the market.”

Dave Darby concludes: “The manufacturing environment needs to diversify and evolve and if suppliers do not adopt the same strategy UK manufacturing will be left behind. As well as supplying our customers we want to support them and stand by them shoulder-to-shoulder to help them become better.”

MSC Industrial Supply Co
www.mscdirect.co.uk