Numatic International opened its doors to North Devon Manufacturers Association and Plymouth Manufacturing Group for another spellbinding visit
Returning to the ‘home of the Henry vacuum cleaner’, delegates were treated to a comprehensive update on the impressive transformation taking place at the 48 acre manufacturing site.
Since the groups visited in 2024, the implementation of collaborative robots (CoBots) has been realised, and this year’s focus was on plans to double turnover whilst maintaining headcount. In a presentation on planned growth and investment, Numatic representatives discussed;
- A new building development to accommodate injection moulding machines, assembly and automated warehousing for the Tub Products (Henry and variants). TAKT Time is planned to remain around 30 seconds for the final Assembly of the Henry, through the use of Operators and Collaborative Robots (COBOT’s) working together on the line – with 2 Henrys produced every minute and several variant lines.
- As part of a business model shift, automated warehousing is being introduced to cope with production of around 6,000 Vacuum Cleaners every day, with storage capacity for around 300,000.
- On the sustainability front they use recycled plastic wherever possible and have replaced plastic with paper for all packing. In addition, they have utilised Solar on most of their roof space and recently invested in a 7 acre Solar farm that currently provides energy to the factory.
Build a Henry/Hetty activity
Everyone then engaged in a Build a Henry/Hetty activity from the relevant Components and assemblies, with everyone enthusiastically engaging in this to understand how the Assembly process works.
The Factory Tour
Split into two groups, with two tour guides per group and everyone having headsets to hear the running commentary and ability to ask questions, this was very well organised and took us through all the production areas, Injection Moulding (49 machines), Laser Metalworking, Rotational Moulding, Metal Tube production, Large machine Assembly, Henry (Tub Products) Assembly, Pack and Despatch.
All-in-all a great visit and many thanks for the Numatic Team for welcoming everyone and giving up 4 hours to host us
Phil Halse, NDMA Membership Coordinator
NDMA and PMG would like to thank Numatic International for hosting the visit, and Phil Halse for organising it. Check out the NDMA calendar for future member events, and do get involved in the NDMA awards!
