Northern Ireland manufacturer scoops top prize at industry awards
Belfast-based cladding specialist Spanwall Facades has won a major national manufacturing award for its commitment to digital innovation.
Spanwall was presented with the Digital Innovation Award at this year’s Engineering & Manufacturing Awards in London.
These awards recognise the trailblazers of engineering and manufacturing that are shaping the future of industry. The event was attended by around 300 manufacturing and engineering professionals from across multiple sectors.
The judges praised Spanwall’s entry as ‘a great example of the way in which digital technologies can be used to drive manufacturing efficiency’.
Commenting on the awards, David Clark, Managing Director of Spanwall, said, “These awards celebrate innovation and excellence across the best of industry. To win the Digital Innovation Award is a huge accolade for Spanwall and is a real credit to our design and manufacturing teams at every level of our business. We are also delighted to wave the flag for Northern Ireland at these national awards!”
“We are committed to digital transformation in the manufacture of our cladding systems and believe it is fundamental to delivering our core values of innovation, building safety and quality to our customers and most importantly to building owners and occupiers.”
Spanwall manufactures sheet metal façade solutions for some of the world’s most iconic architectural landmarks, as well as buildings across the public and private sectors, and large-scale refurbishment projects.
The Digital Innovation Award was presented for Spanwall’s market-leading ‘Smart Manufacturing’ initiative, which has applied digital technology to streamline production processes and workflows.
The new technology allows the live tracking of every cladding component through each stage of design and manufacturing, delivering real-time reporting for improved efficiency and a completely new level of customer communication, transparency and traceability.
The digital system allows Spanwall to create and test new cladding designs for its customers more efficiently, whilst optimising manufacturing resources and significantly increasing overall capacity.
The Smart Manufacturing project represents a significant investment for Spanwall. It has generated shorter lead times and cost reductions of around 80 per cent for digital prototyping of sheet metal components. Machine set-up times for production runs have also been reduced by up to 50 per cent.
The next phase of Spanwall’s investment in digital technology will integrate quality control, preventative maintenance, health and safety, and estimating into the digital workflows.