Site upgrades: The high cost of correcting errors

Almost all (97%) of decision makers said that their organisation had made at least one mistake when implementing robotics or automation.

The study revealed that mistakes and/or associated downtime in the manufacturing process costs organisations £98,000 on average, with 2% of respondents saying they incurred costs in excess of £1 million. With the cost of failure so significant, the acknowledgement that 59% of mistakes or faults could have been avoided with the use of simulation software shows the technology’s potential in helping organisations save significant sums of money.

The importance of simulation software in providing visibility to manufacturers is further supported by the fact that 30% of respondents noted that errors in implementing robotics or automation were due to focusing on the wrong area or process, leaving the problem unsolved.

Steve Morris, country manager UK & I at Visual Components, comments: “Our study results show that with an average of £2.5m spent on correcting errors in the building of new or upgrading manufacturing sites, organisations need to adopt simulation software to better visualise a project during the design phase and ensure costly mistakes don’t occur.”

These costly errors arrive at a time when the sector is already facing external cost pressures, with 17% of organisations citing Brexit, Covid-19 or the inability to secure funding as the primary challenge to upgrading an existing manufacturing site. Almost a fifth of respondents (19%) identified cost management as an important technology in the building or redesigning of the factories of the future.

Visual Components will be on stand C32 at the PPMA Show 2021 (28-30 September).  https://www.visualcomponents.com/resources/events/ppma-show-2021/