I'm Robert Nicholl from NC Engineering.
I'm one of the directors here.
Our company mainly manufactures agricultural,
construction and commercial vehicles.
We have markets throughout the UK and
Ireland and Europe and the rest of the world.
Innovation and R&D have been a major
part of our business and helping us to
expand our existing market and to invest
in new technologies, new markets and new equipment.
We have invested heavily and
we have looked at automating quite a lot
of our existing machinery. For example,
we have a CNC lathe with C and Y axis
for automatic turning of parts. We have
recently installed a laser with a tower for
automatic running and lights out, but
one of our big investments has been our
robotic welding cell. We reached out to
Invest NI to help us to make the
project possible. It's a large capital
investment for a company of our size and
we were skeptical that it could be done
but, with the help of Invest,
they made it possible for us to find the right solution.
We started looking into automation due to 
shortage of skills and lack of skills.
Looking at the robot installation, it wasn't to try and
replace employees. It was to try and
better utilize employees that we have. So
we have guys who were welder fitter
who were upskilled and are now programming the
robot and operating the robot.
They are involved in jig design and testing of
products, they are now more involved in
the design of new products to make them
suitable for the robot.
The big benefit is the productivity. The robot, if
everything is in place, the robot welds
all day every day, there's no breaks.
The consistency - the welds are
exactly the same every time.
By putting the robot in
and letting it run, we save
approximately three fabricator welders
who can be better utilised to do jobs
that are not suitable for the robot.
So with the implementation of the robot,
of course there's always skepticism by everyone.
Our welder fabricators on the floor 
looked at the robot as competition, going
"They are putting in
robots, they are going to get rid of all the rest of us."
where this has never been the
case. The robot is there to make their life
easier, to better utilize their skills
and the jobs that the robot can't do, and take the
mundane, monotonous tasks off them and 
put it to the robot.
The perception of the robotic welding is
that it does it perfectly every time but
for it to do it perfectly every time, all
the parameters have to be met and there's a
lot of variations and variables with the
robotic welding cells. So one of the big
challenges was finding the sweet spot, so
to say, of the weld - changing the amp,
the burn back, the wire speed, the feed,
the position of the welding head.
Everything had its challenges and
everything can be overcome but, in some
instances, it takes considerable time.
The roadmap to deployment
for us was a massive learning curve
going from a
traditional welding sense to robotic welding.
There was a lot more
complication in the parts and I think we
underestimated just how long it would
take to bring into production.
Managing the process and installation
was done in house. From our point of view,
we found it better because no one
knows our system or our facilities better than we do.
With the deployment of
the technology and the robot welding cell
we had a lot of support from the
supplier. They are one of the world
leaders in this type of robotic system,
so their experience was drawn on heavily by ourselves.
Future business strategy
will be more robots coming into the
system. Robotics is definitely the way
forward for, as I said, the mundane
taking the mundane parts of welding out of 
the operators and putting it to the robot
so that more skilled, highly skilled
jobs can be done - the teching, the jigging,
the sorting of parts and let the robot
do the mundane tasks of welding.
Three tips for robotics and automation - 
finding the right solution is the key.
Do your due diligence, see the system, speak
to the people, see applications on the
ground, see if they look the same or can be
applied to the same products
that you are doing. And be patient.
