With the theme of ‘Driving High Performance in UK Manufacturing’, the event, attended by more than 200 delegates, was once again a great opportunity for customers and colleagues to gather and discuss the current issues affecting the manufacturing sector. It was hosted by news anchor Sasha Twining, who has presented high-profile daytime shows for both Sky News and the BBC.

An energetic and inspiring keynote speech from psychologist and behaviour expert, Jez Rose, was followed by fascinating insights and case studies from Weatherford, Caparo and Lambert Engineering.

Brammer and Buck & Hickman showcased their individual Mobile Centres of Excellence along with the Health & Safety Mobile Centre of

Excellence, the Invend™ Demonstration vehicle and the Specialist Tool Demonstration vehicles. These allowed visitors to explore, interact, and see demonstrations on how Brammer and Buck & Hickman can reduce total acquisition costs. There was also an opportunity for delegates to test their skills with the F1 simulator cars or experience a lap of the Silverstone circuit, driven by one of the track drivers in one of the test Ferrari or Aston Martin cars.

Award winners – judged by an independent panel of editors from leading industry trade journals – included Cargill, Mondelez, Unilever and Eaton. This edition also contains a pull-out centre spread featuring a selection of images and a report from this event.

2 Best of Buck & Hickman showcased at Thames Water

4-5People the focus for our manufacturing future

The newsletter from Brammer and Buck & Hickman

Issue 172015

Manufacturing Forum drives best practiceThe world-famous Silverstone race track was the venue for the eighth annual Brammer and Buck & Hickman Manufacturing Forum and Awards event.

Welcome to the first edition of thelink for 2015 in which we celebrate the eighth Brammer and Buck & Hickman Manufacturing Forum and Awards event.

It’s been a busy time for Brammer and Buck & Hickman with several major events complementing our ongoing drive to add value and reduce costs for the UK manufacturing sector – with some great examples featured in this edition.

You can also read more about our renewed commitment to supporting the engineers of the future through the Skills Show and our Apprentice of the Year scheme.

Foreword

6Riveting solution for Eaton

Ian Ritchie, Managing Director, Brammer and Buck & Hickman

Its facility at Banbury, Oxfordshire, is one of five in the UK where Brammer operates an Insite™ – a Brammer branch on the premises, supplying a range of MRO products as well as value-adding services such as supplier rationalisation.

An unplanned interruption to production, primarily affecting the freeze drying operation, threatened to impact heavily on output. Reports highlighted that air compressors were running at full capacity meaning a considerable amount of air was being lost.

Brammer undertook a full compressed air audit reporting 255 air leaks which were impacting production and costing Mondelez £191,000 each year. Brammer generated a detailed report recommending remedial action for each leak and the components and materials required. With repair costs around £4,000, payback was almost instant.

A pneumatic equipment awareness day was also arranged with support from Brammer and pneumatic equipment supplier Festo. This helped develop increased awareness of issues around compressed air usage and costs, informing the production team of the latest technology and techniques which can be applied to further cut air usage.

Audit compresses energy costs for Mondelez

The benefits of working with Buck & Hickman were showcased at Thames Water, one of the company’s key customers, during a dedicated two-day event.

The event combined interactive seminars with the opportunity for Thames Water employees to learn more about how Buck & Hickman’s extensive knowledge and product and service range can help drive efficiency improvements and reduce costs.

The employees explored the Buck & Hickman Mobile Centre of Excellence, Specialist Tool Demonstration vehicles and Invend™ Demonstration vehicle which showcases unique, cost-effective solutions alongside innovative, world-leading products.

A bespoke audit of compressed air systems by Brammer has helped minimise the risk of unplanned downtime while drastically reducing energy usage for Mondelez, one of the UK’s best-known names in food & beverage production.

Best of Buck & Hickman showcased at Thames Water

The seminars covered the new bespoke e-Procurement website created for Thames Water and its advantages in simplifying ordering and stock management while also providing traceability. Another seminar, ‘Good, better, best’, focused on selecting the best and most durable tools for each application.

Among the employees was James May, Thames Water Field Operations Specialist, who commented: “I had a fantastic time and had a chance to see all the latest equipment and understand how to use the appropriate equipment according to the type of job. I feel we have new contacts and ways of ordering our equipment more efficiently.”

Similar events will be held at other Thames Water sites during 2015.

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2011 saw Brammer secure a three-year contract for the provision of MRO products to EDF Energy. As part of its unique bid strategy, Brammer created a dedicated centralised Energy Team, based at its Wolverhampton National Distribution Centre, responsible for service delivery to EDF Energy’s eight nuclear power stations.

EDF Energy’s MRO procurement strategy requires complete product traceability throughout the supply chain, which can make it difficult to identify and achieve cost savings. Meanwhile, a large number of daily transactions make tracking and product consolidation particularly difficult.

In a pioneering joint operation focusing on supply chain efficiency, EDF Energy and Brammer designed a proprietary Supply Chain Transactional Tracker. This identified eight holistic savings categories, which could be monitored and tracked month by month. It could then be reviewed as a monthly savings consolidation report.

The result of this has been a range of savings, from finding the most cost-effective supply routes to quantity optimisation, increased leverage and conversion from the OEM to a more effective alternative supplier. Following directly from this, EDF Energy has

widened the scope for further savings on selective projects without compromising on process or risk.

A notable example was the Japan Emergency Response (JER) project, developed in response to lessons learnt after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi tsunami, which centred on creating new emergency response facilities.

Greater training in medicine, disaster management and mass population displacement has resulted in more effective response and recovery times to any potential nuclear-critical event.

Brammer played a key role in managing the UK part of the project, saving EDF Energy £51,386 across freight, storage, component kitting and order processing costs.

More than 50,000 product lines have been supplied to EDF Energy since the start of the contract.

Joint working and sharing of EDF Energy practices have also enabled Brammer to develop comprehensive quality processes to mitigate any issues relating to non-conformity. Meanwhile, a controlled, strategic approach by both businesses has allowed Brammer to consolidate around 4,000 vendors for EDF Energy.

Delivering excellence in the energy sector

Brammer played a key role in managing the UK part of the project, saving EDF Energy £51,386 across freight, storage, component kitting and order processing costs.

A strategic partnership between Brammer and energy giant EDF Energy has now delivered cost savings exceeding £700,000 since its inception in 2011.

Pictured: Adam Hulme, Company Material Specialist at EDF Energy (left), receives a copy of a case study detailing the partnership from Brammer’s Alex Davies, Operations Manager.

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Keynote speaker Jez Rose, known as ‘The Behaviour Expert’, is a psychologist and expert on human behaviour who has worked with many of the world’s most prestigious companies. Jez has also been a stand-up comedian, and that talent for performance was reflected in his irreverent, dynamic and energetic address on the subject of customer service – not least when he ended up wearing a pair of giant underpants over his trousers to drive home his point!

The substance of Jez’s speech, however, was seriously impressive and thoroughly researched. His claim was that customer service can make the difference between winning and losing market share and revenue, and that just a 10 per cent improvement in customer service will lead companies, over time, to sustained growth and benefits. Jez also pointed out that a huge amount of brand value lies in how the company or brand makes the consumer feel, and that, as a result, surprising clients with great (and striking) customer service is a powerful means to recruit and retain customers.

Pictured from left with Sasha Twining are speakers Warren Limbert, Daryl Stroud, Jez Rose and Douglas Dawson.

People - the focus for our UK manufacturing futureThe speakers at the recent Brammer and Buck & Hickman Manufacturing Forum and Awards may have come from a range of backgrounds but all shared a key focus, namely the importance of people and skills to the future of UK manufacturing.

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Pictured: Jez Rose gave a lively and thought-provoking presentation.

Customer service can make the difference between winning and losing market share and revenue... just a 10 per cent improvement in customer service will lead companies to sustained growth and benefits.

Jez Rose The Behaviour Expert

Supporting skills and ‘Big Ideas’Buck & Hickman was once again a lead sponsor of The Skills Show, the UK’s largest skills and careers event, held at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre.

Buck & Hickman also supported the Solutions for the Planet stand, which encouraged children to explore problems faced across the world through practical workshops.

Both Brammer and Buck & Hickman are supporting this project which aims to inspire young people aged between 11 and 14 to be the scientists, engineers and responsible citizens for the future.

Activities included making jigsaws showing problems relating to water, waste or energy, where the children worked together to identify the problems displayed. They were also encouraged to write down issues facing their community, school and home life and

to develop solutions – or ‘Big Ideas’ – to counteract them. A ‘washing line’ was erected where children could hang their Big Ideas on colourful postcards.

Also on the stand was a competition for building a connect bridge, supplied by Balfour Beatty, with vouchers for the team building the bridge quickest. The task engaged participants in understanding civil engineering and how it is applied in the real world. Another supporter of the scheme, Lafarge Tarmac, also supported on the stand and provided giveaways.

More than 8,500 young people visited the stand and a number of schools and colleges expressed an interest in finding out more about Solutions for the Planet.

The programme continues to run in schools across the region and will be recruiting more mentors to support students coming back to school in September.

Recruitment was also on the mind of two other speakers, Warren Limbert of Lambert and Douglas Dawson of Caparo. Both expressed concerns about the ability of the UK’s manufacturing and engineering sectors to recruit sufficient numbers of staff, and considered ways in which the problem might be overcome.

For Lambert, this issue is particularly acute. The company is primarily a solutions provider; customers approach Lambert with a problem and Lambert provides the solution. More than 80 per cent of the company’s staff members are engineers, albeit in a wide range of different disciplines.

As a result, being able to recruit a diverse range of engineers is crucial to the company’s considerable and continuing success – but as Warren Limbert pointed out in his presentation and in the panel Q&A, this is not always easy. Therefore, he asserted, it is up to the sector to invest in solutions.

Douglas Dawson of Caparo suggested an increased number of apprenticeships as part of the solution to the UK’s manufacturing and engineering recruitment concerns, and framed the central question as: “How do we attract young people into engineering and manufacturing?” In some ways, he suggested, this is a slightly strange problem –

given that a graduate engineer can out-earn their counterpart in accounting or law during their first five years of employment.

Daryl Stroud of Weatherford Group was also keen to talk about people, but in his case the focus was on the importance of partnership working and, in particular, on the crucial nature of the relationships between companies such as Weatherford, which deals in bespoke and unique products, and their supply chain partners. Thus it seems that, while the future of UK manufacturing is looking extremely bright, people and ‘people skills’ must take centre stage if that success is to continue.

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The company needed to resolve a challenge with a riveter that was used on stainless steel rivets at its facility in Leicestershire. Eaton felt the machine was not fit for purpose as it was constantly breaking. This situation was made worse by the fact that replacement parts were very hard to find. This led to an increased amount of costly downtime and unacceptably high engineering-related labour costs. Eaton worked in partnership with Buck & Hickman to investigate and develop a solution.

Having gathered the opinions of Eaton’s maintenance and production teams, and compiled a set of parameters and specifications, Buck & Hickman set about sourcing an alternative riveter.

Eaton needed a machine that could impact a stainless steel rivet into a circuit board within specified dimensions and timeframes. Buck & Hickman rigorously tested a range of potential machines and finally identified one that fitted the bill – a Facom air riveter.

A riveting solution

Key awards sponsorship renewedBrammer and Buck & Hickman have announced they will be sponsoring this year’s Manufacturing Champions Awards as well as continuing their support of the prestigious Best Factory Awards.

Organised by Works Management magazine, the Best Factory Awards honour the achievements of the UK’s manufacturers. They will be sponsored by Brammer and Buck & Hickman for the second year in succession with the ceremony to be held at 8 Northumberland Avenue, London, on Friday 25th September. Brammer will sponsor the Most Improved

Plant Award with Buck & Hickman supporting the Supply Chain category.

This year will also see Brammer and Buck & Hickman sponsor the Manufacturing Champions Awards for the first time. Held in December at the Midland Hotel, Manchester, the Manufacturing Champions Awards are also organised by Works Management magazine.

They showcase the depth of talent working in industry and reward the star performers on a national stage.

The awards also promote the exciting career opportunities on offer within manufacturing. Brammer will sponsor the Employee-led Innovation category with Buck & Hickman backing the Manufacturing Team section.

Cooper Bussmann (now part of Eaton’s Bussmann business) has worked with Buck & Hickman for more than 15 years, enjoying a range of savings and efficiency improvements in its production of fuses and inductors for the electronic and electrical markets, but the relationship recently took another step forward on a production-critical project.

It’s yet another example of how we as a Group add significant value through tailored solutions which go well beyond our standard product offering.

Ian Ritchie Managing Director, Brammer and Buck & Hickman

Eaton trialled the Facom product for several weeks, after which it was clear that not only had it proved capable of doing the job, but it had also increased efficiency and delivered impressive savings. Buck & Hickman is Eaton’s first port of call for all enquiries connected with maintenance and production efficiency.

Ian Ritchie said: “This highly successful project has not only improved efficiency and productivity for Eaton, it has also enhanced the already strong relationship between the company and Buck & Hickman. It’s yet another example of how we as a Group add significant value through tailored solutions which go well beyond our standard product offering.”

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The awards reward and recognise innovation and outstanding success among international business communities. Among the judging criteria for this category are a product’s innovative features and performance.

Exclusively available from Brammer and Buck & Hickman, the Uniwrench is a globally-patented product with a unique open-ended non-slip design. It allows the removal of damaged fasteners, including nuts and bolts, which are up to 70 per cent rounded off.

The Uniwrench’s design also includes a spherical box end that fits virtually every kind of fastener type. Offering a lifetime warranty, the Uniwrench’s

Global acclaim for Uniwrench

His extensive experience also includes spells with Gilroy Filtration, Chemspec International and Excel Industries. Ciaran (pictured) succeeds Chris Davies, who retired at the end of 2014 after more than 30 years with Brammer. Chris initially joined Brammer in 1977 and pioneered the company’s successful entry into the fluid power market.

Ian Ritchie said: “Chris Davies has been a major asset to Brammer and has played a vital role in making Brammer Ireland the established market leader that it is today. We wish him the very best for his retirement. As we say goodbye to one member of the Brammer family,

we welcome Ciaran to the team. Previously General Manager of SPX’s Irish business which had a circa €10m turnover, Ciaran has a strong background in growing businesses and is the ideal choice to take Brammer Ireland forward.”

It’s been a busy time for Brammer in Ireland with the company’s Mobile Centre of Excellence recently having spent two weeks visiting customers including Lafarge Cement, Smurfit Kappa, Allied Bakery, Michelin, and Montupet in and around Belfast, and Valeo Vision Systems, Kerry Group, Genzyme, Mondelez and Becton Dickinson in Dublin.

The market-leading Roebuck Uniwrench has been recognised by Acquisition International’s Business Excellence Awards as Global Product of the Year 2014.

global success emphasises Roebuck’s position in delivering exceptional quality to industrial maintenance professionals throughout Europe.

Ian Ritchie said: “We are delighted the Uniwrench has been given the recognition it deserves. It’s a truly innovative product offering an effective solution for customers.

Ciaran Hallinan is the new Managing Director of Brammer Ireland.

“Roebuck is synonymous with quality and high performance and the Uniwrench’s success signifies this. Brammer and Buck & Hickman are always committed to delivering the highest standard of product to our customers and the Roebuck Uniwrench demonstrates this dedication.”

The Uniwrench was also named Product of the Year in the tools category at the Product of the Year Awards, held at the AMPER trade fair in Brno in the Czech Republic, during 2014.

Forging ahead in Ireland

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The initiative will formally recognise the importance of apprentices to the future of British industry by rewarding the top students with the title ‘Apprentice of the Year’.

The scheme complements a similar highly successful initiative run for several years by Buck & Hickman.

All UK-based companies operating an apprenticeship scheme, as well as colleges providing training courses in engineering or key trades, can nominate their star apprentices with a winner from each organisation selected.

Brammer and Buck & Hickman will donate prizes for the winning apprentice in each company, which include a certificate, trophy and £100 in vouchers for the acclaimed Roebuck tool range which is exclusively available from Brammer and Buck & Hickman.

Each apprentice registered will receive £10 in Roebuck vouchers.

Ian Ritchie explained: “Throughout our history, we have been involved in meeting the ever-changing needs of British industry for MRO products and we have seen many apprentices grow to become leaders in the sector. Having our own Apprentice of the Year Awards once again demonstrates our backing of the UK’s future industrial leaders and we look forward to learning about the commitments our future generations are making to engineering.”

The Buck & Hickman awards scheme continues to attract new companies with apprentices at South West Trains (SWT) the latest to receive their awards.

Andrew commented: “I thank Buck & Hickman for sponsoring the Apprentice of the Year Award – it is a great opportunity for apprentices to shine

It is a great opportunity for apprentices to shine and it is refreshing that companies such as Buck & Hickman see the importance of apprenticeships.

Andrew Thain South West Trains Apprentice of the Year

and it is refreshing that companies such as Buck & Hickman see the importance of apprenticeships in general.”

For further information about the new Brammer scheme and to register, visit www.brammer.co.uk/apprenticeships Information on the Buck & Hickman scheme can be found at www.buckandhickman.com/about-us/apprenticeships

Pictured: Andrew Thain, SWT Apprentice of the Year (centre), with Christian Roth, Engineering Director of SWT (left) and Rob Hulson, Apprentice and Graduate Manager at SWT.

Headway Road, Wolverhampton WV10 6PZwww.brammer.co.uk www.buckandhickman.com

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Brammer and Buck & Hickman back the next generationBrammer has announced the launch of its Apprentice of the Year scheme, a further initiative confirming its support for the UK’s next generation of engineers in the manufacturing sector.