A Gateshead based training and automation solutions company has expanded into new markets, taken on new staff and built a new training facility to cope with demand for its specialised work.
Run by father and son team David and Chris Simm, Scantime Automation has its facilities near to the Metro Centre, but its services are used by businesses all over the UK, Europe, and the USA particularly in the troubleshooting and training of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs.)
Virtually everything today is manufactured with the help of a PLC. They are widely used in automobile manufacturing, food and drink processing, airport baggage control, pharmaceuticals, and power generation. In essence, they are industrial computers used in all manufacturing process and Scantime are particularly in demand for their training and ability to troubleshoot and design software when things go wrong on the production line.
Despite the effect of COVID, Scantime has had one of their best performing years after radically changing the way they operated. Unlike many other businesses in their sector, they adapted their operations and continued to carry out their training face to face at their clients’ workplaces but also by creating new online training courses from their new state of the art training room.
The training delivered by Scantime was given special recognition by EAL, the specialist skills partner and awarding organisation for the engineering industry. Scantime’s specialist courses, EAL PLC Industrial Maintenance and Fault Finding Professional for industrial maintenance engineers, enables companies to avoid costly downtime and increase productivity by giving engineers the skills they need to fault find themselves. Having already designed Level 1 and Level 2 courses, the team have taken the training even further with a new higher specification Level 3 course.
Daniel Johnston Amazon RME Engineering Area Manager recently completed the course.
“The course provided exactly what was required for myself and my colleagues and will enable us to become more efficient when dealing with issues on the shop floor. It also gave us the structure we needed to understand the concepts behind PLC fault-finding, which will be invaluable to us in the future.”
As well as training, the team have also started to refurbish the software and equipment associated with production lines and automation dating back to the 90’s when that technology was cutting edge. Since then, the sector has moved on and many manufacturers and businesses are finding that their existing production line machinery is now obsolete with spares hard to find and reliability dwindling.
To complete the growth of the company, David Perry has been taken on as a sales and marketing executive.
“I previously worked as a support worker supporting people with complex learning difficulties but decided I wanted to pursue my interest in engineering. I went to Newcastle College and gained relevant qualifications which have proved invaluable here at Scantime,” he said.
MD David Simm added: “The future is bright for Scantime as we have a good team and the right knowledge and expertise to help businesses keep their manufacturing processes running thereby saving tremendous amounts of money. We’re very much a North East firm but have a working footprint all over the world which we are justly proud of.”
