UK-based tube manipulation machinery specialist, Unison Ltd, has further enhanced its service and support programme, to ensure its global customer base is well placed to maximise opportunities throughout the Coronavirus pandemic and as the green shoots of recovery begin to appear. Renamed ‘Unison UltimateCare’, the programme takes the company’s machine tool support services to even higher levels and is the result of close dialogue with customers to better understand their needs and new ways of working.
“Unison is renowned for providing uncompromising levels of machine tool service and support – quite possibly the finest across the tube bending industry,” comments managing director, Alan Pickering. “In creating Unison UltimateCare, our objective was simple: to better equip our customers to respond to the opportunities they encounter during these peculiar times, by assisting them with superior, highly agile and rapid support services, which can also include guidance in component prototyping and tooling. While significant emphasis has been placed on providing greater levels of online support, wherever face-to-face support is concerned - just as from the start of the Coronavirus pandemic - we operate safe working practices to protect our customers and teams.”
Unison UltimateCare has been designed to make it even easier for customers to select the precise maintenance solutions they require to ensure their Unison machines provide long and reliable service. It can also include services such as CAD modelling, component prototyping and process optimisation to enable manufacturing strategies and capabilities to quickly adjust to new orders and opportunities. Services can be selected on an ad-hoc basis or combined into one competitively-priced agreement, tailored to need and designed to assist budgeting by spreading the cost of machine care.
Commenting on the level of service provided by Unison, Jonathan Thacker, operations director of The Walsall Wheelbarrow Company says: “Unison are so much more than manufacturers of high-quality machine tools. They have assisted us in product development and helped keep our production costs down – something that’s essential for a low-margin, high-volume business such as ours. A major point of difference with Unison is that they gain an in-depth understanding of each customer’s business to ensure the advice they give is relevant and tailored. When we bought our Unison tube-bending machines, there were cheaper options on the market – but I wasn’t prepared to gamble on quality, capability or level of support. If you want a long-term partner, one that will deliver the highest levels of service, I believe you will struggle to beat Unison. Our annual service contract has proved invaluable, with services scheduled for planned downtime, telephone support, online diagnostics and discounted spare parts.”
Unison UltimateCare at a glance:
- Online ticketing system with guaranteed next day response
- Online machine support to resolve production issues
- Ad-hoc service and repairs
- Unison-trained mechanical, electrical and software engineers located globally
- Service level agreements – with PPM programmes tailored to individual customer needs
- Discounted OEM spare parts with service level agreements
- Machine inspection and condition reports
- Control upgrades and process optimisation
- Servo drive axis and full upgrades
- Commitment to safe, socially-distanced working practices
Unison Ltd: intelligent tube technology
Established in 1973, Unison Ltd is the UK’s leading manufacturer of tube and pipe bending machines, offering the largest range of all-electric benders for diameters from 4 mm (5/32”) to 275 mm (10 53/64”). With a reputation for building, highly powerful, highly robust machines that deliver uncompromising levels of accuracy and repeatability, Unison Ltd continually innovates the tube and pipe bending marketplace. The company manufactured the world’s first all-electric tube bender in 1994, followed by the world’s first all-electric multi-stack tube bender, then the world’s largest all-electric tube bender for the shipbuilding industry. Available in single-stack, multi-stack and right/left varieties, Unison machines are delivered to over 21 countries globally. Unison’s tube bending software is recognised as the most user-friendly control system for tube bending machines. The software is written and supported by Unison, ensuring complete control of its evolution, with no need for third party support.
The Walsall Wheelbarrow Company
The Walsall Wheelbarrow Company is the only UK-based manufacturer of wheelbarrows that uses predominantly British-made parts, with many made in-house. The company installed its first Unison automated production cell in 2012. This comprised an all-electric 38 mm twin-head bending machine with automatic hopper loading, seam detection, hole punching and robot offload, and replaced two hydraulic tube benders and a manual hole punching station. The result was rapidly streamlined operations, with multiple processes performed simultaneously. A further Unison production cell, comprising of an all-electric Breeze 30 mm bending machine with automatic hopper loading and robot offload was then added in 2016. This took production to 2,800 barrows per day, with the capacity to upscale to 3,500 barrows per day depending upon demand.