Power management company Eaton has demonstrated its commitment to UK manufacturing by investing over £3.8 million at its Worksop UK site where rotary cam switches and switch disconnectors are produced to supply world markets. The investment has significantly increased the capacity of the plant, which has recently won the Energy & Environment award at the prestigious Best Factory Awards, ensuring that it will be able to meet the rapidly growing demand for Eaton switches well into the future.
To date, Eaton’s on-going investment at its factory in Worksop includes new injection moulding plant and ancillaries such as compressors and materials handling systems, automatic assembly equipment, a new automated test facility for finished switches, and robot-based palletisers to prepare the plant’s products for convenient transport and handling.
In specifying the new equipment, Eaton has paid particular attention not only to efficiency, flexibility and productivity, but also to minimizing energy usage and the environmental impact of its switch manufacturing operations. For example, energy-efficient motors, fitted with variable speed drives where appropriate, are used throughout the new plant.
Plant Manager Neil Gill expands: “At our site here in Worksop, which is Eaton’s global production center for cam switches and switch disconnectors, we have adopted lean manufacturing principles. This means that we can keep costs down and deliver best value to our customers, but it also means that our production facilities have to be flexible and efficient so that we can complement value for money with fast deliveries.”
“The on-going investment in equipment here, together with the commitment and flexibility of our staff, is making it much easier for us to meet these requirements and to further enhance the plant’s status as a global center of manufacturing excellence within the Eaton group.”
Products manufactured at the Eaton plant in Worksop include rotary cam switches with ratings up to 100 A, which can be supplied in an almost limitless range of configurations to suit specific needs, and rotary switch disconnectors, also with ratings up to 100 A, which facilitate the safe isolation of electrical supplies and circuits. The 10,000 m2 plant has almost 200 employees, almost all of whom are directly involved with manufacturing.
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