Poor quality and unresponsive suppliers blight industrial automation sector claims new report

POOR quality spares and an unresponsive component supply sector are the main concerns of the industrial automation supply chain, a new study has found.

Stafford-based industrial automation spares supplier European Automation said the findings followed a pan-European survey on the state of the international automation industry.

The biggest threat to manufacturing productivity is named as unscheduled downtime due to equipment failure. It said when production was interrupted, minutes of lost output could potentially cost a firm thousands of pounds.

The 162 survey respondents comprised European Automation customers across 30 countries in Europe, America and the Middle East. They were asked to rate the company’s performance on pricing, approachability, quality and diversity of products, responsiveness of sales team and speed of delivery.

As many plants operate constantly, 24/7 availability and an effective supply chain were top priority for most respondents, it said. In addition, more than two thirds (67.6%) of those surveyed said that due to the economic climate, competitive pricing was important but that uncompromised quality was essential.

Jon Wilkins, marketing manager at European Automation, said: “European Automation’s success is rooted in identifying manufacturers’ demand for obsolete or end of life parts and delivering them quickly, rather than selling the customer a complete system replacement.

“The survey illustrated that in order to maintain our strong market position, we need to become even more agile and offer solutions quicker than our competitors.”

Speed of delivery remains a critical requirement for many manufacturers with 79.8% of respondents rating it as being very important or crucial to their maintenance activities.