Engineering greater success
Brimbelow Engineering is successfully delivering on their growth targets as a result of developing key relationships with their customers, most notably Oyster Marine and Trend Marine. Utilising their range of CNC Turning and Milling machines, Brimbelow were moving into a further planned growth and investment phase and as a consequence were faced with skills development issues and space restrictions and were planning to build a new facility alongside their existing site. As a result, Brimbelow asked MAS-East to help them in delivering the targeted 20% growth through improved manufacturing performance
"The assistance from MAS-East produced almost immediate improvements in our overall performance. The project involved the whole workforce in creating a greater understanding for the need to develop and improve the way we do things. Through great teamwork, we achieved results that everybody understands and wants to continue to take forward.
Great job!"
Gavin Seward
Managing Director.
The MAS–East team proposed to help Brimbelow deliver their growth target by streamlining the current workflow and layout in addition to increasing equipment uptime using Set-up reduction (SMED) techniques and involving the team in 5S and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) principles
The programme was launched by introductory training to all staff in the principles and key tools of Lean and the team then immediately set about implementing the lessons learned.
The workshop was cleared of all none utilised materials and equipment, and new process area layouts were developed with each operator given a zone of responsibility for Continuous Improvement activities.
In parallel, Visible Planning and Scheduling boards were introduced to enable the development of self managed teams. This would enable visibility of what jobs were required on each machine and what tooling, equipment and paperwork were required…and just as importantly where it was.
As a result of the intelligent application of lean principles and lots of hard work, Brimbelow were able to exceed the growth targets originally set and support further agreement of an ongoing contract with a key Customer.
