Issue 391
There is widespread awareness that the current climate leaves little room for inefficiency – or for working in isolation – within our industry, and many others. Throughout our insight, installations and product features this issue, a recurrent emphasis on partnership, process and productivity emerges as a potential antidote.
Elmbridge provides an interesting example of how a traditional family business can respond to this environment. Fifty years after starting life in a garage, the company has developed from a regional supplier into a much broader technical partner, combining coatings, equipment, extraction, and process expertise.
What is particularly striking is the company’s ambition. Having doubled in size over the past five years, Elmbridge is targeting a further tripling over the next decade. That growth is intended to come through investment in R&D, acquisitions, technical capability, business development and in its people – all with the aim of creating a more integrated proposition for its customers.
LEUCO GB is taking a similarly process-led approach, albeit from the tooling side of the industry. Our conversation with Carlton Heathcote and Shaun Tate demonstrates why engineering expertise matters: a tooling decision can have consequences well beyond the cutting edge itself.
That is an important message at a time when manufacturers are understandably looking closely at expenditure. Investment needs to deliver measurable value, looking beyond the initial purchase price to understand the effect on the whole production process.
Within our surfacing feature, Decorpanel, part of Premier Forest Products, demonstrates its ability to act as an extension of the factory floor – providing additional capacity when it is needed without necessarily creating permanent overhead.
The same principle is evident in our feature with Teknos and Mumford & Wood at Elizabeth Castle. In order to preserve the character of a historic building while providing timber windows and doors capable of withstanding a demanding coastal environment, the solution combined timber selection, joinery expertise, factory-applied coating technology and long-term maintenance.
Taken together, these examples point towards a broader shift in the way manufacturers are approaching their supply chains. The value of a supplier increasingly lies not simply in what it sells, but in the expertise, flexibility and problem-solving capability it can bring to the wider manufacturing process.
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