£1.5m Order Lost – Growth Mindset

An SME Manufacturer £8m turnover, LOST an order worth £1.5 Million to a competitor that didn’t even manufacture, just outsourced. Due to their continuous learning, performance and mindset of not concentrating on what to shrink, but rather concentrating on what to grow they had no issues in recovering the situation. Now there may be a million and one reasons why they lost that order, but their growth mindset, drive to be the best and ability to react as team in the face of that situation is what counts. Their thirst to continually be better.

No matter how well you do what you do, someday somebody is going to come along and try to do it better. That’s the nature of competition.

growth mindset

I’ve spoken to so many businesses over the past few months where complacency seems to be present, we’re doing alright, we’re making money, why do we need to improve. FOR EXACTLY THAT REASON ABOVE. You cannot predict the future, but you can ensure you are giving yourself, your team, and business the best opportunity to react to the positive and negatives that come along. It’s been fantastic to support, work with and see the transformation of the team and business above, remember…

Strive to be better today than your were yesterday, plan to be better tomorrow than you are today.

#UKManufacturing #GrowthMindset #Improve #Leadership #manufacturing

0330 311 2820

Book a Return Call at a time that Best Suits You “HERE

The Lean Bug!

Whatever you think of when you see the words “Lean Manufacturing” or “Lean Thinking” you cannot get away from the fact it is a set of business principles, which, when applied, deliver exceptional results.

Over my career, I have seen the impact and benefit that Lean Manufacturing brings to any size of business, from an Engineer (in the 90s) working at an Small SME to a Corporate Exec (2009) implementing Lean Strategies.

I personally got the bug for Lean working for a small company called Linread Northbridge (although part of McKechnie Plc). We were making precision fasteners for several sectors but predominately Aerospace. The MD at the time gave me a book to read on “Kaizen” and I was hooked. From then on I have implemented Lean within every business I have worked in to now helping Manufacturing SMEs with short, high impact Interventions to major Lean Programmes and Strategies.

My first Kaizen event in the 90s was facilitating a SMED event on a Header Machine that took a whole shift to change-over from one product to the next, being trained, coached and mentored by a Japanese Sensei. We got the change-over down to 30 minutes. Through using the correct KPIs and driving root cause analysis I’ve increased production output and capacity in manufacturing cells that businesses have said couldn’t be done. I’ve moved 100+ machining centres within 5 days to create flow and as an Exec have put in place Strategies that realised Savings of +£15m within its first year.

Anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

I’ve heard the words “it won’t work here” more times than anything and I can tell you it’s Bu&*s*&t. The smallest improvement can have the biggest impact and everyday day is a day to grow and develop your potential. (Marginal Gains – The doctrine of marginal gains is all about small incremental improvements in any process adding up to a significant improvement when they are all added together.)

The skill is adapting, modifying and re-designing those business principles to ensure you get measurable and sustained business performance, after all in its simplest form all you are doing is looking at a time line from ‘Sales & Marketing through to production, production through to Customer Delivery’ and reducing that time line by removing the Non-Value Added wastes within it. Yes there are loads of tools and techniques that go hand in hand with that, but the biggest one is leveraging the knowledge within your people to drive continuous improvement.
Lean Manufacturing is not merely a set of mutually supporting techniques, it’s a change in the organisation’s culture and thought processes. The benefits to any business (regardless of size) are huge, and are only limited (in my opinion) by your Organisation’s Culture and Leadership Behaviour. Companies that fully commit to Lean dramatically outperform their competitors over time.
So get as close as possible to where the work is being done, lead from the ground up to first find what the real problems are and then face and resolve the underlying challenges.

0330 311 2820

Book a Return Call at a time that Best Suits You “HERE

Miss that moment – and you start to decline.

“There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance. Miss that moment – and you start to decline.” – Andy Gove

My personal view and experience is that it’s more than one point in time.

SMEs are characterised by their ability to adapt easily to market changes and their lean organisational structure (not as in Lean Manufacturing), which results in a more dynamic environment and a quicker decision making process. Although SME businesses vary widely in size and capacity for growth generally they will all follow a similar path: going from Owner/Entrepreneur with two or three employees to a business aiming for £10m or even £20m per year, and experiencing 20%/30% year on year growth and upwards along this journey. The sketch below illustrates an example of this, showing where most businesses may feel the pinch points of growth at key intersections.

SME Journey and Growth

Zero to £5m

The hard work really kicks in here. This part of the journey is often the one that is the most lonely, but often the most exciting. But it is here that most business owners feel the pains. Because it can be a lonely place, it is easy for owners to doubt themselves, they also don’t know what they don’t know which can be a limiting factor. And as an owner one of the main areas of responsibility is simply getting things done, which means you are working in your business as a manufacturer, and not working on it as a strategic leader.

In smaller SMES, management structures are also small with most owners being very hands-on. People are stretched across all functions all processes. Systems are not in place, IT is minimal or non-existent and there is a lack of standard processes. Utilising the Continuous Improvement and Management graph we can see that all levels are being worked with a very lean structure. Small customer projects, odd-job shop style of working.

SME Zero to £5m

As we get closer to a turnover of £5m, it becomes clear that things need to change. We are then moving from that odd-job, one off customer delivery to a mix of bigger projects, possible increased volumes and an increase in market share from your customers. As we start to scale-up from the initial start-up, decisions have to be made about the organisational structure, the company’s technology infrastructure, its business and marketing strategy, etc. With regard to organisational structure, you might now start to see the requirement for supervisory position(s) to take on more of the owners duties, the labour force growing, new machines, loans, investment, functional departments, Operations, Quality, Sales, Technical, Finance. This is where it can be rise or decline with those decisions. In scaling and growth and the opportunities it also brings its own set of problems, (albeit they are nice problems to have because its growth).

£5m to £10m

IT Systems and Planning may start to become an issue here, Microsoft Excel may no longer be good enough to manage your shop floor requirements (although I have seen £100m business still using excel but it was beginning to creak), and you are likely at this level to be considering MRP/ERP implementations. You may also look at outsourcing some functions, like Sales, Human Resources, Engineering Support, Quality, Quality Accreditation. All this requires a lot of investment in terms of time, money and energy. You need to do your homework to avoid costly mistakes, especially where IT is concerned, but it’s all opportunity.

And this stage, the business owner is now becoming more removed from the day to day operational tasks on the shop floor. This can be a very uncomfortable feeling in one or two ways. Firstly, the owner may want that hands-on role and not relinquish that part. It could be that the business is now at the stage where the owner is stopping it from growing, the entrepreneurial side is restricted as they are tied to the business. There a number of factors and variables in play, and having the right people is key, being a good leader is fundamental (at all stages).

SME £5m to £10m

£10m upwards

Financial Audits are required at this point (although some companies can be exempt if they satisfy certain criteria), so businesses need to be aware of the UK Audit requirements. Similar issues and opportunities still arise, but on a grander scale. Organisational structures are still fundamental, we might now start to see the need for Middle Management. We may also be looking to diversify into new markets, take on bigger orders, and higher volume. From £5m and up, some of your customers may not be the ones you want to deal with now, the one-off, low volume, job shop may not be your ideal customer. You might be seeing more of a need for Product Flow and Cells (Lean Manufacturing is a must from when you first start up), competition is high so you cannot stand still, even if your decision is to stay at a certain level. You will need to be driving for improvements to maintain the status quo, and your service has to be exceptional. Collaboration with a network of Manufacturers and or Partners, in my opinion, is key in this new world, and can bring some fantastic opportunities for growth. Again, IT infrastructure comes into play as the business is getting bigger: more employees, management leadership. The addition of new premises or additional buildings on the same industrial estate (this is where having a world class logistics operations pays dividends in not impacting your efficiency/productivity). The opportunities may now open up bringing the out-sourced services back in house, Sales and Human Resources, etc. At this level, you are likely to be making informed decisions based around data. Strategy alignment throughout the organisation is required, communicated and disseminated so everyone in the organisation knows the direction the company is going in and what the priorities are.

SME £10m upwards

Every business is different. One business’s pinch point may be at £3.5m another’s £7.5m but there will be very similar decisions to be made, but at this level the advantage is that businesses are likely to be able to make these decisions in a more informed way through data. Companies may not achieve sustained profitable growth unless they draft in the specialist skills required at the right time for the business. It’s the maxim that we don’t know what we don’t know. And the best advice is to seek advice from the experts in order to shift the dial in the right direction. This is something we can certainly help with, just contact the number below.

Ask yourself:

How much will it cost you not to resolve the issues that you are currently facing now or in the immediate future? How much will it cost you not to eliminate that pain? What are the lost opportunities on not taking your business to the next level or indeed keeping it at the level you want?

0330 311 2820

Book a Return Call at a time that Best Suits You “HERE

Manufacturing UK Monthly

Manufacturing UK Monthly

If you have a passion for UK Manufacturing and love to hear all the positive news about the sector we work in, then I invite you to become a member of the Manufacturing UK Monthly.

Manufacturing contributes £6.7tn to the global economy. Contrary to widespread perceptions, UK manufacturing is strong. The Manufacturing UK Monthly brings regular updates on positive news, events, best practice and articles from key people of influence all within Manufacturing.

INVITE TO JOIN THE MANUFACTURING UK MONTHLY

* indicates required






Your privacy is important to us, your details will never be shared with anyone else. Privacy & Cookie Policy

Funding for Manufacturers

Are you a Manufacturer?

Are you looking to make an improvement, solve a problem?

Would some funding help ease the costs?

The image illustrates all interventions covered by the EDRF Funding up to September 2021. The funding covers areas including West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humber, parts of the East Midlands, South East and East of England.

(Case Study – SME Manufacturer Leverages Funding & Increases Output)

Interventions in Scope

With up to 35% grant funding our Improvement Programme is designed to stimulate the growth of aspiring manufacturing businesses, in any sector, helping them to identify opportunities for growth, solving current problems, driving continuous improvement and increasing competitive performance.

To qualify you have to be a Manufacturer with Fewer than 250 employees and a turnover less than or equal to €50 million OR a balance sheet total less than or equal to €43 million.

Just enter your name, email address and the description of the intervention you are interested in and we’ll be in touch, it’s as easy as that.

* indicates required





Your privacy is important to us, your details will never be shared with anyone else. Privacy & Cookie Policy

Automation – Don’t shy away from it.

Automation has been around for years in many different forms within manufacturing, it’s not new.

In my early days as a Kaizen Engineer with McKechnie Plc (mid 90’s) I remember purchasing machines with the ability to auto eject or unload parts when the cycle had finished ( a Lean terminology called Hanedashi). A Hanedashi device saves associate time on a production cycle by ejecting a finished part from a machine, allowing the associate bringing the next part to load the new part into the machine without having to remove the old one.

Hanedashi - Auto Eject

This device enabled the set up of Single piece flow production lines, known as Chaku Chaku Lines in the Lean terminology which means Load, Load. With these Load Load Lines, all of the machines needed to make a product are located together in a “cell.” Any part of the work that can be automated is automated. As per our Hanedashi example previously, loading a part into a machine may require getting the orientation correct, properly seating the part in a jig, and clamping it into place. This requires a human skill. However, when the machine finishes it can just release the clamp and eject the part in a fully automated process. That’s how Chaku Chaku got its name. The associate only loads the machine, and never unloads it.

Single Piece Flow - Chaku Chaku

Now we’ll introduce Jidoka into the equation, as we probably all know Jidoka is one of the two pillars of the Toyota Production System along with just-in-time. Jidoka translates to “Autonomation” or “Automation with a Human Intelligence”. Autonomation highlights the causes of problems because work stops immediately when a problem first occurs. This leads to improvements in the processes that build in quality by eliminating the root causes of defects. Autonomation gives equipment the ability to distinguish good parts from bad autonomously, without being monitored by an associate.

jidoka - autnomation

The benefits of Load Load Lines and Autonomation are significant. They include the elimination of work in progress, defect free production, and leads to large productivity gains because an associate can handle several machines, termed multi-process handling.

Now with Automation and the principles discussed above we can get very creative, I mentioned working at McKechnie Plc in mid 90’s along with a great friend of mine Wayne Pimblett, Wayne was recruited as Team Leader for a cell not so creatively named Cell 7. The cell manufactured Fasteners. The traditional route was something like, Header Machine, Turn, Centreless Grind, Fillet Roll and then Thread Roll and would pass through various machining departments as batches, across roads into different units, you can imagine the waste.

Now, Cell 7 brought all of the principles we discussed earlier together, single piece flow, Load Load Lines, Ah! I must stop here, because we actually had the cell completely autonomous so the load was automated and the movement of parts between machines, so in essence all we needed to do was bowl feed the fasteners into the start of the process and the line did everything else. With the aid of Visual cameras for in process quality inspection – Autonomation, pick and place loading/unloading, auto eject of bad parts, etc the only interaction required was machine consumables, tooling change and obviously if anything drastic happened.

AUTOMATION mixed with some creative thinking and Lean Principles can have massive benefits to your business.

Automation should not be shied away frombut you do need to know the impact, benefit, justification for your business, so do the analysis. My opinion on the this is if we have 95% Non-Value Added Waste in the surrounding processes and we concentrate on the 5% Value Add in loading/unloading a cycle our focus and cost is miss-spent. It may look fantastic but you have far more opportunity to increase productivity, reduce costs, etc outside of the cycle. Which again could be through Automation, but do the analysis.

0330 311 2820

Book a Return Call at a time that Best Suits You “HERE

Improve Productivity

Copy and Deploy the ultimate productivity swipe file to reduce costs and increase efficiency of your processes.

OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) is a “best practices” metric for monitoring and improving your manufacturing processes (i.e. machines, cells, production lines…). OEE is simple, practical and powerful. It takes the most common sources of manufacturing productivity losses and places them into three categories: Availability, Performance and Quality.

This swipe file will help in understanding the data required to monitor your machines and manufacturing processes in shifting towards IR4.0 and taking the next step in fully automating the data collection.

For further reading on OEE “click here

OEE - Improve Manufacturing Productivity

Benefits of OEE

* indicates required






Your privacy is important to us, your details will never be shared with anyone else. Privacy & Cookie Policy

Operationalise your Strategy – FREE Download

OOperationalise your Strategy
Benefits of Policy Deployment

Organisations with the capability to consistently execute their plans through the adoption of Strategy Execution outperform the market. Forget all the meaningless buzzwords and fancy dashboards, you need context and a trackable action plan to drive real performance improvements.

* indicates required






Your privacy is important to us, your details will never be shared with anyone else. Privacy & Cookie Policy

Sales and Operations Planning – is it a missing link in your business???

Benefits of Sales and Operations Planning

  • Increased customer service levels
  • Improved profitability
  • Reduced time to market with new products
  • More products to increase revenue
  • Lower inventories and obsolescence
  • Reduced lead times
  • Quicker responsiveness
  • Top-down management control
  • Predictable operating performance for shareholders

The Sales and Operations Planning process is the primary tool by which there is a systematic review of the business, out of which plans are established. It brings Sales, Marketing, Manufacturing and Finance together to agree on the volume of products to be produced over the next sales horizon. The process should be incorporated into the business calendar to coincide with the key activities of, strategic reviews, budget preparation, quarterly forecasting, monthly performance reviews and MRP/ERP timing.

Alignment from S&OP Process goes beyond just the meeting, the entire company is aligned to a given direction. This is one of the huge benefits from the S&OP Process. The Master Scheduler is implementing the decisions made by the S&OP team. The planners and buyers are aligning to the Master Scheduler. Capacity is being increased and decreased in accordance to the plan. Changes to the financial plan are made in advance given the decisions from the S&OP meeting. The monthly meeting allows for issues to be raised, tracked and resolved. Key department heads are present so that the entire company can be aligned behind a decision and as it is cascaded and communicated to the levels below.

The sales and operations plan looks 12 – 18 months into the future, this level of visibility opens the door to a different way of thinking: a longer term view. The process facilitates the bringing together of data from different departments and presents it to the team (Operations has visibility to Sales plans. Sales have visibility to the supply plan. Finance has visibility to expected revenues and expenses)

Finance are an integral part to making the process successful, they ensure the alignment of the financial plan to the operational plan so ultimately the objective of making money is achieved and on track. It’s no good planning to ramp up 30% if you only have the resources to ramp up 10%.

New product introduction (NPI) can be a headache (new suppliers, ramp up, technical issues, capacity, obsolete inventory, etc) but again the S&OP process facilitates the discussion. It enables all stakeholders to be aware when a new product introduction is happening. Sales needs to be talking to Operations. Operations needs to be talking to Finance. Many companies deal with NPI separately and have a project plan dealing specifically with new product introductions With NPI on the agenda within the S&OP process, issues can be raised, actioned and tracked, (releasing of capacity for trials, product traceability, etc) are managed carefully.

A big part of the S&OP agenda is reviewing the key business metrics in order to identify and resolve performance issues, when issues are raised, the key stakeholders are in the room to get things done.

0330 311 2820

Book a Return Call at a time that Best Suits You “HERE

The saying goes “Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast” Drucker

The weekend of October 22nd I was watching the Austin Texas F1 Grand Prix, this is one programme that everyone knows in my house not to disturb me watching. This weekend Mercedes were all but clear of winning the constructors championship as long as Ferrari didn’t outscore them by 17 points, something in the end that Ferrari couldn’t do. Congratulations MercedesAMGF1!

Now what pricked my ears up was the interview with James Allison at the end of the race, a number of questions were asked around the differences between Ferrari and Mercedes, James (Ferrari man from 2000-2005 and returning 2013-2016 to Mercedes 2017) an absolute professional and held in high regard within F1 would not be drawn on the comparison, but what he did say regarding Mercedes summed it up in 28 seconds of video (click the image below for the interview).

If you look at Ferrari’s take on things in the past few races when things have been going wrong, their behaviour seems to be one of blame and bullet a few people, you would almost say “Manage by Fear”.

As James Allison put, by being Brave to Ultimately Prosper and the culture they have embedded at Mercedes to succeed clarifies the saying “Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast

Culture is hard to collate, classify, categorise and it’s certainly hard to measure, it also seems one of those things Businesses seem to shy away from, even borderline not accept. It’s the invisible glue that you can’t touch or feel, so we’ll ignore it.

BUT IGNORE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK THOUGH!

Quite often, businesses think culture is some flowery-fluffy stuff that doesn’t make any difference in the end, or even if they think it does matter, they have an excruciatingly hard time describing what theirs is.

This invisible glue that holds the organisation together is probably the most powerful entity you can tap into, it’s part of your businesses DNA, the same as how I describe Policy Deployment, it becomes part of your business DNA. The “How you get things done”

The “How you get things done” drives performance.

Culture is not what we say, but what we do without asking. A healthy culture allows us to produce something with each other, not in spite of each other. That is how a group of people generates something much bigger than the sum of the individuals involved.

So don’t underestimate “YOUR BUSINESSES CULTURE

0330 311 2820

Book a Return Call at a time that Best Suits You “HERE