Behind the Booth: Stories from the show floor – Meet Peter Todd, Product & Marketing Lead for Q5D

London, 23/07/2024

Welcome Peter !

Could you share some insights into your career path and what led you to your current position at Q5D?

After many years in in TV production I started producing content for a small engineering company, this company designed and manufactured several highly innovative products in challenging markets. I became more involved in the management of R&D projects to create a niche offering where we could capture a higher share. The result of this was a spinoff which has secured several rounds of investment to support our path to market.  I am now Product Manager and Marketing Lead for Q5D which has 25, mostly engineering, employees based in North Somerset near Bristol.

Why do you feel it’s important to get involved with bringing the industry together at Advanced Engineering?

Trade shows like Advanced Engineering give us exposure to an ideal audience who understand the problems we are solving and appreciate the engineering challenges we have overcome to create our automation product. This product solves a problem which has, until now, required huge numbers of factory workers.

Is there anything you can tease for your participation at Advanced Engineering this year?

Our existing hardware offering is large and very capable, CY10 was designed to service a broad range of requirements. In 2024 we will present a new product which enables factory throughput at high speed with very large parts – car, truck, bus, aeroplane size. This new machine design builds on our experience. It delivers a very capable automation platform for making a complete wiring harness automatically with speed and precision plus the ability to create variation of design for every part.

Let’s talk more about the industry, – do you think there are any industry-specific challenges or opportunities in the UK market that your projects or initiatives address?

Every industry which has electrical function needs our product. There are reports produced by industry bodies and governments all over the world about labour shortages and supply chain disruption. These reports all say there is imminent trouble. Manufacturing output in high wage economic regions has been falling for years already. Recent pandemic and shipping disruptions have resulted in shutdown of plants and global tension has highlighted the risks of lost capability.

Our automation product allows a far shorter supply chain and flexible manufacturing, a plant can make single parts on site just-in-time, a single skilled worker can run several machines and the machines can run non-stop. There is no stock holding or transportation except for reels of wire, terminations and existing substrate parts of the product.

Does your company contribute to sustainability and environmental considerations in the engineering industry?

Q5D produce machines which make wiring harness. The current system for this production is a very large facility, usually in a low wage economy far from the final assembly point. The setup complexity of a production run means that large quantities are created and include a high scrappage rate. The completed harness is packaged for shipping and transported long distances. These harnesses are installed by hand as they are floppy and hard to handle. The handling of the part results in additional failure which is compensated for by overspecification of expensive conductor material.

The Q5D system will allow a machine to install the final product, this allows a specification matched to the conductor requirement not the handling, so the part is lighter. Conductors are adhered to existing surfaces in a product which protects them and allows the robot to handle the rigid part, not the floppy harness. A real word example; 5kg can be saved from each business class aircraft seat resulting in huge CO² reduction per flight.

Beyond this is the saving of transport and zero waste from scrappage due to human error, obsolete stock, and a radical change in that each item produced by the machine can be a different specification as per the order. Currently most cars carry the weight of wires for features they do no even have simply because the large harness factory requires excessive minimum orders.

During end-of-life disassembly all parts produced on our machine are identical and use minimal material variations, even varied wire colour is not needed. A robot could follow a program to strip copper conductors from the base polymer just by following the digital twin generated on assembly.

What ongoing efforts does your organisation make to stay at the forefront of engineering and manufacturing advancements in the market?

We are firmly rooted in innovation, this is the most challenging place to be but we love it. We are serving a market which is looking for the factory of the future and are describing in detail the way this will be achieved to our first customers.

Do you have advice for any students starting in the engineering industry?

In each project, start by looking at the end goal and understand it well. Learn how it has been done before but don’t be afraid to challenge every stage, even question the end goal. Too many choose the well trodden path but miss the obvious shortcut just because they did not take in the big picture.

Where do you see the future of the engineering industry going?

The UK has great ideas, we need to retain the capability too. Software helps but mechanical solutions are still the only way we can change raw material. Without skilled workers we will rely more and more on import and our money will end up elsewhere. 

This was an insightful depth into the Automotive and Engineering industry, thank you Peter for your thoughtful responses!