While the spooky season of hocus pocus and trick or treat culminates with Halloween, few things frighten fabrication job shops year-round more than unproductive downtime. The prospect of a ghosted workstation on the shop floor is frightful enough to haunt the productivity dreams of manufacturing executives everywhere.

Spooked by the ongoing labor shortages, shops that would have never considered an automation solution are exorcising their reluctant demons and embracing “lights-out” manufacturing processes to address head-less headcount challenges.

The growing marketplace pressure on fabrication shops to work faster, on a variety of small-batch jobs, with greater flexibility and shorter lead times is only going to magnify any issues manufacturers have with operations: from shortages to production performance, to dependability, to rising costs. A punch/laser multifunction machine may well be the answer. 

Murata Machinery has been a pioneer in fabrication technology for nearly a century. And this combination punch + laser base machine is yet another example of multifunction innovation and artistic product applications.

Watch the multi-function machine in action as it delivers Muratec’s holiday greeting for All Hallows Eve in laser-guided artistic splendor.