City Engineering Bristol Ltd.

Background

A Bristol stainless steel and aluminium company is on track to save £50,000 in just a few months thanks to the South West Manufacturing Advisory Service's Advanced Engineering Skills Programme.

City Engineering in Fishponds is the latest to benefit from the programme, which is funded by the South West Regional Development Agency, European Union and Learning and Skills Council. With hands-on support and expert advice from manufacturing specialists with grass roots experience of the industry, City Engineering is looking forward to a new approach in 2005.

South West MAS specialist Phil Townsend and trainer Chris Faber have been introducing City Engineering's staff to leaner working practices, including better control of stock levels, reducing off-cuts, utilising waste in new ways, improving the flow of materials and overall factory planning.

The Advanced Engineering Skills Programme encourages like-minded companies to share their knowledge and experiences of good working practices, and to explore practical ways of bringing about tangible improvements. Hanham-based Kingsway Engineering and CTC Precision Engineering join City Engineering on the programme and all three companies are reaping the rewards.

Scope

To form a continuous improvement team and through the Advanced Engineering Skills Project introduce the delegates to lean manufacturing techniques that are conducive to measurable business improvements.

Method

A continuous improvement team was set up and participated in practical lean manufacturing workshops followed by hands on site visits focusing on the following topics.

• Identifying Non-Value added activities 7 Wastes
• Process flow control and customer demand rate, Kanbans, Takt time calculation
• Process mapping
• SMED ( single minute exchange of die )
• Measurements and displaying key information
• Problem solving
• Key learning and action points
• Work place organisation ( 5s )
• Team-building
• Effective communication techniques
• Key performance measurements
• Sharing best practices with other like minded companies
• Presentation of methods and results to management (by company delegates)

Options and Recommendations

From these workshops action items were established and included the following:

• Introduce new planning and monitoring techniques to control the use of material
• Reduce non added value activities in the area relating to material flow
• Reducing waste by controlling material off-cuts
• Improving efficiency by introducing the 5S methodology
• Introduce new planning techniques
• Use key performance indicators to drive the business forward
• Work together with one common goal

Results

• A 20 % saving on material usage
• A 20 % increase in overall operational efficiency
• Improved labour and machine flexibility
• Improved flow of material and information within the identified value stream
• Improved awareness and management of bottlenecks
• Enhanced team-work that has led to major improvements in morale
• A better understanding of the needs of internal customers and suppliers

Further Actions

Cascading the knowledge and learning from this project throughout the organisation, as well as engaging key personnel in leadership, management and supervisory training.

Customer Feedback

"Working with the South West Manufacturing Advisory Service has helped us identify a number of operational and administrative weaknesses and put the right measures in place to ensure we overcome them.  The new working practices that we have learned and introduced over the past few months are having an extremely positive impact on our productivity, profitability and customer service. If we don't save £50,000 this year as a result of the Advanced Engineering Skills Programme, I will be very surprised".