Pryor Marking Technology : Tracing certainty
Published : September 2006
Pryor Marking Technology is at the forefront of its market. MD Neil Andrew explained to Robert Pols how this commanding position has been earned
Bold decisions may require courage, but they can bring remarkable results, as the example of Pryor Marking Technology demonstrates. “We’ve taken some significant risks in terms of investing in new technology,” observed MD Neil Andrew. “But, as a result, our future is now more secure than that of our competitors, who are 10 paces behind us.”
The company started life in 1849 as Edward Pryor and Son in Sheffield, where it made marking products for the steel industry. Over the years it has grown into a business handling the full spectrum of requirements for industrial marking, and the widespread recognition of its products is reflected in an export level of 60 per cent.
Traditionally, the business has encompassed three areas. There is the production of basic type punches; there is the manufacture of engraved dies and assay stamps; and there is machinery for all forms of programmable marking including dot peen, chemical etching and laser.
But more recently there arose a feeling that manu-facturing should reap the kind of benefits that the retail sector was deriving from barcoding. It was at that point that Pryor began to investigate machine-readable coding for industrial rather than retail applications. The company invested heavily in Data Matrix technology, which offered two-dimensional coding that can be marked on virtually any kind of component; and it also acquired Absolute Vision, a small Birmingham company with valuable skills in visual decoding. The investments were made at just the right time.
Recommendations from the US Air Transport Association were encouraging new thinking by civil airlines. As a result, Boeing and Airbus decided to introduce policies encouraging aerospace engine manufacturers to mark all components with a 2D code. Pryor was then invited by a UK aerospace engine manufacturer to tender for the global supply of traceability equipment, and to be responsible both for the marking of components and for the equipment to read the markings.
By 2005, with the contract won and fulfilled, Pryor Marking Technology had secure occupation of the newly-established niche. “We were totally compliant with the process capability for marking all engine components with a machine-readable code,” said Andrew. “We were able to provide marking that was 100 per cent accurate and error free and that could provide a database of every single component in real time. Each part of each engine could be tracked throughout its lifetime, from cradle to grave.”
The aerospace contract attracted attention and the company’s profile rose dramatically. “We started to receive enquiries from different areas of industry, and marking applications spilled over from aerospace into medical, biotechnology, logistics, defence, nuclear and automotive sectors. We can now go into virtually any sector of industry with this Auto ID technology.”
The demand has grown on a worldwide basis. The US Department of Defence, for instance, has launched its Unique Identification (UID) programme, making automatic identification mandatory for any purchase that costs more than $5000, has a serial number, or is mission critical. For Pryor, the trend represents a resounding justification of its investment in the new technology.
“So, in addition to type punches, engraving and marking machines, we are now building an international traceability business,” said Andrew. “But since we have to supply globally yet support locally, we’ve had the challenge of finding suitable partners around the world with the technical ability to provide that support. Joint ventures have therefore become essential to our strategy and to the future of the business here in the UK. One joint venture is in Pune, India, where Marks Pryor Marking Technology has Asia as its territory, providing a regional centre of excellence and forming strategic partnerships across the continent. The other is in North America, where Monode Pryor Traceability serves the US, Canada and Mexico. We in Sheffield will act in the same way as a hub for Europe. What remains is China, where we still rely on our old network of distributors.”
In time, a centre of excellence will be established there too, but, for the present, two joint ventures represent challenge enough for what is at heart a Sheffield SME with 150 people – especially since it’s a business that faces issues on the home front too.
“Margins on the standard products are thin and they were being eroded,” Andrew explained. “We needed to move into higher value-added applications, and traceability technology has high value. Our future in the UK depends on it. So we aim to exploit the lifetime of commodity products and restore their margin by manufacturing offshore, while building up here the business that’s based on the new technology.”
That makes particular sense, he continued, from the point of view of energy. “The traditional work all involves heat treatment, and the associated energy costs have more than doubled. That reduces margins to the point where a business is only marginally viable and is the factor, above all, that has driven us to India. Moving the manufacture of commodity products there will significantly reduce our energy requirements here.”
What has emerged from all the changes, he concluded, is a new sense of identity. “Though Pryor started life as a marking company, it was always concerned with product identification and the tracking of parts. I now see it increasingly as a traceability business, and we’re winning custom on that basis. We’re working with some major blue chip companies, winning contracts against international competition. On three occasions now we’ve been selected as preferred supplier, because we’re the only organisation that can offer a total solution covering both marking and vision systems, and because our ability to provide global coverage with local support is unmatched. We looked at our traditional business, saw that it would run down in time, and took the decision to invest heavily in new technologies. That’s something our competitors haven’t done, and it’s something that’s communicating itself to the customer.”