Tomburn to improve overall quality rather than just the production line ’ s throughput . Chris ’ ambition is to cut down on production time , by reducing the number of rejects from each run , by ensuring every product reaches the company ’ s high standards . As he details : “ The robotic arms work on a ‘ follow me ’ system . This involves your experienced sprayer spraying the first load of work material by guiding the robot over the piece and essentially showing it where to powder coat . The robot remembers the movements and then simply repeats itself over and over again . This means that by getting it right once , we get it right every single time . This implementation negates the issues of human staff getting tired or distracted or needing a break and means that every flight bar of the same type is painted in exactly the same way . Less rejects , means less time taken to complete tasks and there ’ s also less responsibility on our team to replicate the exact same job repeatedly .”

Despite the introduction of their automated colleagues , Tomburn still places great importance on its human workforce . The company strives to maintain all of its training initiatives inhouse , whilst outsourcing assistance from the developers of the technology that it has employed . Chris favors the bespoke element of the internal approach that allows its teams to focus only on the relevant pieces of equipment – teams that it ’ s constantly searching to expand from within to enhance employees ’, and indirectly the company ’ s , skillsets .

Casting his eye to the future , Chris is hoping for more of the same . The company successfully made it through the pandemic by relying on a combination of the UK Government ’ s furlough scheme and the smaller half of the business , which is oriented around spraying stairlifts in kit form . It has recently completed a large cladding package for one of its bigger

customers , of which Chris was incredibly proud : “ The Dart is a transportation system that connects Luton airport to the railway station . The project required over 10,000 square meters of materials to be coated in a gold metallic , which is a notoriously difficult product to apply consistently . But having looked at the photographs and visited the site myself , the consistency that the team achieved is absolutely astonishing . It was essentially six pods , set like upside-down umbrellas and clad in bespoke panels that were put together like a jigsaw . Any

inconsistencies would ’ ve stuck out like a sore thumb , but there are none – it looks amazing . It ’ s a project we want to showcase

as it ’ s one of which we ’ re immensely proud ,” he concludes . ■

www . tomburn . com

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