Butler Automatic

BUTLER AUTOMAT I C their machines. In an age that believes strongly in product and service diversification, Butler Automatic has found success by doing quite the opposite – marshaling its forces and focusing them upon one unwavering aim. “We serve a wide variety of industries, from pharmaceuticals to pet food with everybody in between,” admits Johns. “But we concentrate on the very narrow area of splicing film together. We have some lower-cost competitors who offer a product with fewer features and lower reliability, and some small regional competitors who can offer more customized service to localized customers. But in the packaging space, we are far and away the leader. We respond to splicer problems faster than companies that are trying to do many different things.” Being able to do so comes as the result of running ongoing improvement programs that progressively raise the bar on efficiency and output. “Over the past couple of years, we’ve instituted several ease- of-use and ergonomic upgrades to our machines,” ROI of 622 percent after using the auto-splicing technology on their flexible cheese packaging line. Another saw an increase in gross annual profits of over $1 million thanks to their $59,000 splicer. “Our engineering resources are dedicated to building the best, most reliable, most flexible splicers in the world,” Johns affirms. Designing and delivering the highest quality splicers to businesses worldwide wouldn’t be possible without the support of Butler Automatic’s local and international partners. “We have several strong partnerships with small fabricators and machine shops in our area,” says Johns. “We feel that having a partnership agreement with them expands our footprint, substantially, and gives us significant flexibility.” As for the bigger companies they do business with, Rockwell Automation headquartered in Milwaukee, WI provides electronic components and programmable logic controllers, while Festo, a German multinational industrial control and automation company, supplies the valves and other plumbing that run