Open Day at B&R Industrial Automation's new UK premises

Guests included Thomas Rienessl, B&R's International Sales Manager from Austria, 17 customers and seven members of the press. In addition, the UK subsidiary welcomed back John and Liz Crane, as it was John Crane who first established B&R's presence in the UK over 20 years ago.

B&R's new premises include a large open-plan office space, a workshop for developing customers' applications, a warehouse, meeting rooms and training areas. Indeed, a major benefit offered by the move to new offices is that the company has much better facilities for training, and will therefore be expanding this area of its business.

Regional offices

In terms of floor area, the new facilities are similar to the old ones, but are much better suited to today's requirements. B&R will also retain the Southern area office in Andover, and is planning to open a new office to serve the North of England during 2012. The reason for this is that a higher standard of application support can be provided by engineers who are located close to customers, and B&R emphasises that one of the ways in which it differs from its competitors is in the high level of engineering and application support that it provides. Meanwhile, B&R is currently seeking to recruit four more application engineers, both for the North and the South. Interestingly, B&R's UK team has almost twice as many application engineers as sales engineers.

Worldwide B&R claims to be the fifth largest supplier of automation products to OEMs, and the second largest in Germany. Apart from 2009, the company has consistently grown by around 15 per cent per year, almost exclusively through organic growth rather than by acquisitions. Nevertheless, one acquisition in 2010, Mondial, creates new opportunities for B&R in the field of mobile machinery, and this acquisition is also notable in that Mondial was, itself, originally a spin-out company from B&R.

In 2011 B&R is expected to have a turnover of around EUR410 million, and currently manufactures approximately 150,000 controllers per year, 120,000 industrial PCs and operator panels, and 145,000 drive systems (mainly servos). Here in the UK, turnover in 2011 is targeted at 4.8 million.

Automation at home

Although some manufacturers of automation products have started to shift production to lower-cost regions of the world, B&R has retained production in Austria by installing state-of-the-art automation. This approach results in consistently high quality and also reduces labour content and, therefore, manufacturing costs.

Another point that B&R was keen to emphasise to the customers and journalists present at the Open Day was the way in which Automation Studio is truly the only programming environment required for all of its products. Whether an application involves servo systems, stepper motors, motion control, automation (using a PLC or industrial PC) or operator panels (HMIs), the company's Automation Studio contains all of the necessary tools - even safety functions are programmed using a modular add-on utility. The optimum automation system, therefore, may well be one in which all of the functions are performed using B&R hardware in order to maximise the benefits of the single programming environment. And this is one reason why B&R tends to work more closely with customers than its competitors do, helping to achieve engineered systems that match the requirements in terms of dynamics, safety, energy efficiency and cost.

Further support for UK customers is provided, if required, in the form of local stockholding of products, whether standard or customised. Limited stocks of other catalogue products are held in the warehouse in Peterborough, though most shipments are delivered directly from Austria to the customer - with next-day deliveries often being possible if time is of the essence.

Long life cycle

Something else that was emphasised during the Open Day was that B&R designs and manufactures products for a long lifecycle. For example, the company can still support products that were delivered over 20 years ago, and customers today can expect current products to be supported for 10-15 years. However, this does not mean that B&R's product range is static; indeed, the opposite is true, with 400 development projects being undertaken during 2011, divided equally between hardware and software developments, and B&R prides itself on its innovative products and continually evolving product range. For example, the company has recently introduced new frequency inverters, preassembled gearmotors, stepper motors, safety products, and panel and PC products.

New products that were presented in more detail at the Open Day included the Power Panel 500 that offers the compactness of an integrated control and visualisation device with the power and performance of an Intel Atom-based automation PC. Also introduced were new Atom-based CPUs for use with B&R's X20 PLC. These offer a cycle time that is half that of previous X20 CPUs, onboard Gigabit Ethernet, more I/O in the same space and detachable terminal blocks.

Small drives are also being launched. In common with all B&R motion products, the new Acopos Micro single- and multi-axis drives support PLCopen. To complement these miniature drives, B&R is offering small DC motor controllers and stepper drives (including units with IP67 protection for mounting on a machine close to the point of application of the motor).

New direct-mounted gearboxes simplify ordering and assembly operations. However, unlike conventional motor-gearbox combinations, the B&R units use a more compact direct-coupling arrangement that eliminates the need for one of the support bearings, resulting in a smaller, lighter assembly that is, therefore, better for applications in which the motor is mounted on moving equipment.

By the end of the Open Day, guests had received far more than an introduction to B&R. The company is clearly a market leader in terms of innovation as well as sales volumes, differentiating itself from its competitors through its fully integrated approach to automation - largely achieved through the Automation Studio programming environment - and by its exceptional standards of customer support.