Meet the team: Chris Brooke, Production Manager

We speak with Chris Brooke, Production Manager at Yamato Scale UK, about his 15 years of experience and why automation is the future of manufacturing.

Well done on nearly 15 years at Yamato, Chris! How has the company changed in that time?

In many ways, Yamato hasn’t changed a massive amount! I joined straight from my degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and since then, the focus has been on providing customers with the solutions and support they need to get results.

What has developed is the areas we operate in and the projects we’ve worked on. We now work with a wide range of customers across all manufacturing sectors, and we’re constantly supporting them in new ways, including servicing their production lines.

Personally, over my years at Yamato, I’ve been able to get involved with new things, including design work and software development. I’ve also worked on specialist projects, including creating specifications and testing production inspection systems to make sure they exactly meet the needs of the plant requesting them.

What does your role entail?

On a day-to-day basis, I run the production and repairs departments. On the production side of things, my main role is building checkweighers and other equipment to meet the customer specification. This means organising the parts required, ensuring each system is built correctly and conducting thorough quality assurance, so the customer receives a high-quality product.

The focus is on providing actuator parts for multihead weighers on the repairs’ side. Actuators are an integral part of any multihead system, so they need to be in the best possible condition to prevent production errors and downtime. We service actuator parts to get them back to total efficiency. I also manage the repairs team to ensure that any repairs are actioned quickly for the plants that need them so that they can get back to productivity.

What’s a common question you get asked about your job?

Usually, it’s just people saying, “you do what?”! I like to break it down to those who aren’t in the industry. Most people aren’t aware of the work that goes into the food they eat, so working at Yamato has been an eye-opening experience, seeing first-hand the effort that goes into it.

It makes you appreciate the rules and regulations in the food processing industry and what manufacturers do to adhere to them. Ultimately, most of the food we eat provides quality for a reasonable price – which many people overlook.

What do you like most about your role?

The best part is the variety. Like every business, we go through stages where it’s busy, but we also have those quieter periods where we focus on developing our products and creating specialist machines and custom units. Over the years, we’ve been asked to integrate a wide range of exciting features in our systems as manufacturers’ needs change.

It means there’s always something to learn, and we report our findings back to Japan so they can incorporate them into Yamato’s software as part of our global knowledge-sharing initiative.

My second favourite thing is the people here – it’s a friendly and unoppressive environment to work in, where you enjoy yourself at work.

What challenges do you believe the manufacturing industry faces today?

The most significant is the increasing cost of production. Some food producers are working for little profit these days, so costs must be managed.

One of the ways we’re seeing this happen is manufacturers shifting to automated solutions to reduce labour costs. The pandemic forced many factories to restart their operations without preparation. With automation, this becomes a faster and easier process.

It’s also proven essential with the limitations of human labour due to the need for people to isolate during the pandemic, as well as the affect of Brexit. As a result, the move to automation has sped up.

What does the future look like for Yamato, especially as manufacturing needs develop?

I think as the industry becomes more automated, Yamato’s products need to as well.

We already offer a range of automatic and semi-automatic solutions, including our multihead weighers. There’s also the YX20 which serves as a great end of line solution, allowing manufacturers to conduct quality checks at minimal effort.

The car industry is already fully automated, with only skeleton staff present to monitor robots and deal with any issues. I see the food industry taking a similar route. In order to get there, manufacturers need intelligent, computer-controlled solutions. They also need efficient servicing to minimise the risk of issues and manual intervention.

At Yamato, we already promote servicing across our clients, so I see this becoming even more important as more people move to automation. We’re also experiencing more people asking for high-level automation – so we need to continue to drive this innovation as a team.

If you’re looking to access innovative solutions for your plant, including automated weighers and inspection systems, or recruit a servicing contact you’re your existing production lines, Yamato can help.