Beamex Solutions: Traceable, Efficient, And Sharp Competitive Edge
Key points
As one of the UK’s leading full-service engineering providers, OCU Hornbill Ltd, has taken huge strides forward in the market thanks to its partnership with Beamex. The combination of advanced, multifunctional calibration hardware and user-friendly software has given OCU Hornbill a sharp competitive edge in the crowded UK marketplace, helping it win new contracts and provide faster, more efficient service for its highly diverse client base.
OCU Hornbill, based in the town of Resolven, South Wales, has been providing systems integration solutions in process control and automation for close to 35 years.
Many clients have remained loyal customers since the company was founded in 1989, a testament to OCU Hornbill’s service quality and professionalism. Today OCU Hornbill employs close to 150 staff and serves client sites across the world, including in the UK and Germany.
OCU Hornbill’s diverse client base covers a wide variety of market sectors, most notably utilities, oil and petrochemicals, metals, and cryogenics, and includes world-leading steel and utilities providers. Its portfolio includes low and high-voltage services, instrumentation, panel manufacture, systems design engineering, calibration, procurement, personnel hire, and training.
The company’s low and high-voltage teams are experienced users of Beamex hardware and software in their daily work. Beamex solutions are also used from time to time as part of OCU Hornbill’s panel manufacturing work.
Market-leading Service Quality Underpinned By Beamex Solutions
One of the Beamex champions at OCU Hornbill is Matthew Lewis, a project manager with a wealth of experience in calibration and instrumentation. “My passion is making sure our clients receive only the highest-quality service, and I can confidently say that our Beamex equipment and software is a key factor in this,” Matthew emphasises.
OCU Hornbill operates two Beamex MC6 Advanced Field Calibrator and Communicators alongside multiple pressure modules and external transducers. As part of their work, technicians also use Beamex CMX calibration software to manage and maintain clients’ instrument databases. Beamex solutions are used daily to calibrate pressure, level, and flow transmitters as well as resistance temperature detectors, thermocouples, and pressure switches.
“In our view, Beamex solutions offered the best feature set out there for the price. We were also impressed with the strength and depth of their customer support, particularly on the technical side.” Matthew Lewis, Project Manager
Building A Lean, Mean Calibration Machine
Prior to joining the Beamex ecosystem, OCU Hornbill was using a manual calibration system, which presented challenges on multiple fronts, as Matthew explains:
“Using paper and Excel spreadsheets was not only very time-consuming for our technicians, but error-prone too. No matter how experienced they are, people make mistakes every so often. On top of that, it was almost impossible in practical terms to track the calibration history of the instruments we were taking care of, and we had no easy way to share calibration data with our clients either.”
In OCU Hornbill’s search for a new calibration solution, the traceability and ease of use of the Beamex CMX database combined with the exceptional accuracy of Beamex calibrators made a big impression.
“In our view Beamex solutions offered the best feature set out there for the price. We were also impressed with the strength and depth of their customer support, particularly on the technical side. The people providing the support are calibration experts who speak our language, which saves a lot of time and stress on our end!”
With Beamex calibrators and software now an integral part of their field operations, OCU Hornbill’s technicians are far better placed to execute their work efficiently and maintain the high level of service that their clients have come to expect over the years.
“Since moving to Beamex our processes are much quicker and more efficient,” Matthew says. “We can simply download the data to the calibrator so all the information we need is in one place. Beamex provides a fantastic platform for building an extensive calibration history so we and our clients can track trends and forecast when an instrument is likely to need replacing, for example. What’s more, the handover process is so much easier with the certificate option. We can now generate calibration certificates in seconds and share them with clients instead of handwriting them or typing them up after the job is complete.”
Matthew summarises the key benefits of working with Beamex in the following way:
• Efficiency: The Beamex CMX database and software make the calibration process much more efficient. We can easily upload and download calibration data, and we can create certificates quickly and easily. This saves our clients time and money too.
• Automation: Beamex MC6 calibrators are very user friendly and can be automated to perform a variety of tasks, which saves us a lot of time and effort.
• Traceability: The Beamex CMX database tracks the calibration history of all our instruments; knowing that the instruments we take care of are always accurate gives us and our clients peace of mind.
• Data integrity: With the Beamex CMX Software and MC6 calibrator combined, instrument and result data is digitally captured, transferred, and stored, so there is no risk of compromised or corrupted data. This means that we and our clients can be sure that calibration data is always accurate and reliable.
“At Beamex, our primary aim is to help our customers to achieve their business objectives,” explains Aidan Farrelly, Calibration Consultant for Wales, Ireland and South West UK.
“Our goal was to help OCU Hornbill continue their long history of providing premium level of service to their customers through digitalisation of their calibration processes to improve efficiency, traceability, and data integrity. It’s great to see the added value we have brought to OCU Hornbill’s service team, and I look forward to playing a small part in their continued success into the future.”
New Opportunities On The Horizon
Today, using Beamex solutions is even a qualifying criterion for some of the tendering processes that OCU Hornbill is involved in. “It’s safe to say that without Beamex we would be missing out on multiple potential new contracts,” Matthew points out.
“Put simply, Beamex makes us a more attractive prospect in the market, primarily because of the excellent traceability it brings but also because of the economic benefits too. With Beamex hardware and software we can deliver our services more efficiently while maintaining high standards of quality. We see the relationship with Beamex developing in a number of ways in the future. We plan to expand our use of Beamex products and software, and we are also interested in exploring the use of the bMobile application for ATEX inspections. There’s a lot to look forward to!”
Discover more on how Beamex have helped other industries with their calibration solutions.
Beamex Ltd
- 01455 821 920
- beamex.ltd@beamex.com
- http://www.beamex.com
- Unit 1, Interchange 21, Centre Court Leicester Leicestershire LE19 1WR GB
About us
A better way to calibrate – Since the establishment of Beamex in 1975, the company has focused strongly and consistently on calibration. Beamex is a technology and service company that develops, manufactures and markets high-quality calibration equipment, software, systems and services for the calibration and maintenance of process instruments. The company is a leading worldwide provider of integrated calibration solutions for improving quality and efficiency.
Beamex offers a comprehensive range of products and services—from portable calibrators to workstations, calibration accessories, calibration software, industry-specific solutions and professional services. Through Beamex’s global and competent partner network, Beamex’s products and services are available in more than 80 countries. Beamex is certified in accordance with the ISO 9001:2015 quality standard.
Over forty years of experience in manufacturing and developing calibration equipment and systems, close co-operation with customers that have high requirements and uncompromising quality standards, shared by the people working at Beamex, are things that have made Beamex’s calibration solutions world-class. As a proof of Beamex’s success, there are more than 10,000 companies worldwide utilising its calibration solutions.
Beamex’s ISO 17025 accredited calibration laboratory is accredited and approved by FINAS (Finnish Accreditation Service). FINAS is a member of all Multilateral Recognition Agreements / Mutual Recognition Arrangements (MLA/MRA) signed by European and other international organisations, i.e. European co-operation for Accreditation (EA), International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) and International Accreditation Forum Inc. (IAF).
What we do in a nutshell
We provide products and services for companies to streamline and digitalise their calibration processes.
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