Plastics & Rubber World - September/October 2019 - 16

INDUSTRY 4.0

Industry 4.0 in action
A conversation with Adam
Hooper at Martin's Rubber
Company in Southampton
oﬀers insight into how
Industry 4.0 capabilities can
drive business success

Machines at Martin's Rubber have
been stripped down and updated
with data collection capability

We're leveraging the
potential of Industry 4.0
to drive the company
forward
Adam Hooper, Martin's Rubber

WWW.PRW.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019

artin's Rubber has enjoyed an
extended presence in the UK
polymer market. Founded in
1865, the business was originally a shop
selling bespoke rubber products. While
the shop front might have disappeared,
Adam Hooper, operations director, says
bespoke service remains key to the company oﬀering.
"My grandfather bought the business
in 1935, so I'm the third-generation custodian," says Hooper. "We were very early
adopters of selling online, but now a buyer can buy anything in any quantity with
a few clicks. We can't and don't want to
compete with that, so we're now looking
to specialise in resolving unique customer
problems."
The data taken from across the company has played a key role in the switch
back to bespoke service. Hooper: "We're
leveraging the potential of Industry 4.0 to
drive the company forward."
This, though, is the culmination of a
longer journey which started more than
20 years ago.
"In the early 2000s, we were writing our
own software to support costings, order
processing and data collection. We were
having trouble keeping up development,
so we decided to purchase a dedicated
platform, Access Supply Chain ERP. Together with the Access Orchestrate ﬁnite
capacity scheduling module and Mestech
manufacturing execution system, the system drives big data via the ERP."
The ERP is the foundation of digital
operations, with data driving customised
documentation packs through to which
jobs oﬀer best potential in terms of profitability.
"We've done a lot of work over the past

year to understand which companies are
a good ﬁt for us. Using big data, we can
look at a job, or a customer, review the
numbers and determine whether the issue was our mistake or if the customer
simply wasn't right for us."
Turning away business has been a big
step change for Martin's Rubber, particularly for the sales team. It might appear to
be counterintuitive to decline work, but
those choices are reﬂected in most projects delivering improved margins. Customers which demanded time in excess
of a project's value have been proactively
declined.
"It's not just about machine learning
or getting the Internet of Things sorted
out. For us, the bigger picture is the holistic approach to business strategy. We
can see if something's working or, if not,
we can keep adjusting the model," says
Hooper.
But not all integration is worthwhile,
particularly when considering automation. Hooper points out that full automation would be a pointless investment for a
company the size of Martin's Rubber. But
cobots, on the other hand, oﬀer functionality to support future business growth.
"We're trying to pick out the bits that
work for us. With an investment of about
$70,000 [for a cobot], we can get a return
on that," he points out.

PULLING IT TOGETHER

"At the end of each day, the costings system generates a breakdown of every order entered into the system, together with
the margins we're expecting," explains
Hooper.
Asked about the most important data
source, Hooper replies that as labour is

http://WWW.PRW.COM

Plastics & Rubber World - September/October 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Plastics & Rubber World - September/October 2019