News Stories
Trade Cutting Formes
01 July 2008 15:04
Company Profile
Trade Cutting Formes of Tanfield Lea in Stanley, County Durham, was established in September 1988.
The company specialises in the design and manufacture of high quality, precision cutting formes for industry.
Services include the design and manufacture of cutting, perforating, creasing and folding dies; full cutting tools; high rule cutting blades; laser cut bases; samples; full stripping tools; clip strip / speed strip; blanking dies; counters.
The company employs 18 people and the MD and founder of the business is 44-year-old Kevin Alderson.
As Kevin explains, by the summer of 2006, various problems on the shop floor were beginning to impact the business’s performance.
“During our regular brainstorming sessions, all sorts of issues were raised. People complained that when they started work, jobs hadn’t been properly closed off by the previous shift. This might be not closing computer files or cleaning workplaces. They were small niggling problems but were causing friction and wasting time.
“Another problem we had was with the machines. Our products include things like food packaging and these weren’t being cut to specification because of machines that needed re-calibrating.
“Consequently, the operators had to stop their machines for two hours every week because of wasted materials. In fact, we were wasting up to two thirds of materials! We just couldn’t go on sustaining that.
“We knew what the problem was, machines weren’t being calibrated as often as they should but a big problem for us was in finding the time to do it. The factory is always busy, time is pressured.
“The upshot was that when you added up the lost time through various problems, we were losing 20 minutes every day and the business was suffering.”
That was when Kevin was recommended Smartspeed Consulting Ltd by another company. They reported a marked improvement in the efficiency of their business since Giles Johnston had been working with them.
So Kevin Alderson picked up the phone, rang Smartspeed and set up a meeting with Giles.
“I didn’t really know what to expect,” Kevin says, “but I thought, well, it’s worth a try.”
Giles spent five half days with Trade Cutting Formes, paid for by Derwentside District Council.
The result was that Trade Cutting Formes created an annual saving of over £22,000 by doing this work.
“I was surprised by how Giles was able to get the workforce to really open up and talk about the problems they were having doing their jobs,” Kevin explains. “He helped them ask the questions and arrive at the solutions because they’re the guys who know, what the problems are and what the solutions might be.
“Giles is a great communicator – and listener. I could see straight away, when Giles started working with our people, that some really interesting things were happening.
“Giles came up with very simple but very effective changes to help our business and the beauty of it is that they are cost effective, in fact they cost us virtually nothing in money and time.”
Trade Cutting Formes processes about 40 orders every day, several of which will be urgent, same day jobs.
A job triggers an order, a form that follows the work around the various departments on the shop floor.
From the Admin people, the order goes to the CAD (Computer Aided Design) office where it is entered onto a computer server, which can be accessed by everyone via their workstation terminals.
From the CAD Department, the orders are past on to the Laser Bed machines then various other sections such as Rule Processing, the Die Shop and then Finishing.
Giles Johnston quickly addressed the problem of calibrating the various machines that are on site, as Kevin Alderson explains, “He introduced a system whereby on a set day every week the machines are turned off and re-calibrated. There are no ifs, buts or ands. The admin office is asked to ease up on putting out orders and the machines are calibrated.
“But we quickly make up the lost time because the machines operate so much more efficiently and effectively. Giles also introduced a mechanism for the better handling of urgent same day jobs – a red form. It’s so simple but it works very well. The red form stands out from the other white sheets that are the regular, non-urgent jobs. You can see at a glance which are the urgent orders and so these can be processed so much more easily.
“Giles also introduced a red and green card system for our record board, which catalogues all the jobs that have to be done that week, in every department in the factory.
“At the start of the week the record board is all red and as the week progresses, it turns green, as the work is done. Again, it’s so simple but works extremely well. You can see at a glance which jobs are done and which aren’t.”
Another of the benefits of bringing in Smartpeed Consulting, Kevin Alderson says, is perhaps more subjective but just as important.
“There is a better atmosphere in the factory. The open forums chaired by Giles really allowed people to talk frankly about problems in the workplace. Issues were brought out into the open and not just talked about but solved. Workers in one department learnt about what goes in another because Giles encouraged the workforce to take a step back and see the business as a whole.
“It was definitely worth it, bringing Giles in to help us.”