Wonder woman

Crash mats are an unusual, if necessary, accessory in the Wainwright household. Nothing sends dinner party guests plummeting from their chairs faster than a polite enquiry about what their hostess does for a living. "At first people are surprised," laughs Kirsty Wainwright, manufacturing excellence co-ordinator at NCT Leather's Bridge of Weir factory, which turns bovine hides into the precursors of premium leather products. "But you tend to find you're the one with the interesting job. You're the one that enjoys your job, have a story to tell and people are keen to hear." Wainwright's story is in the David slays Goliath genre. Just 22% of employees in the advanced manufacturing sector are women with an even lowlier 5% of managers. The disparity spreads even wider amid the ferocity of NCT's Bridge of Weir tannery shopfloor where, despite a group-wide commitment to investing in female talent, you won't find a single woman. Wainwright is one of just two female managers at the site. The raw hides in goods-in offer a microcosm of UK manufacturing's gender imbalance. Certain customers value ox skins over cow because they are deemed of superior size and strength. "I quickly realised that I wasn't going to get many girly chats," jokes Wainwright of her first impressions of the factory floor. "I remember thinking: 'I just can't faint'," she adds of the olfactory assault that comes with an environment where hundreds of animal hides are processed a day. "But when I got out to the shopfloor, I was fascinated." The laboratory-like process of liming, dipping and dying that turns fleshed hide into a stable precursor for the fine leather that makes up premium car and aeroplane seats was manna to a recent biosciences graduate who happened upon the NCT job at a career fair. "The original idea was to come and do a technical chemistry role," explains Wainwright. "But then the opportunity came up to work in the tannery. When I was here I just really enjoyed getting involved in operations." The posting coincided with the launch of a continuous improvement initiative by parent company, the Scottish Leather Group, in May 2013 and she seized the opportunity to co-ordinate the programme at NCT's two tanneries. Leading lady of lean "I was lucky to be there at the right time," says Wainwright. "Our MD encouraged me to look at the opportunities that lay ahead with lean manufacturing. The group is very improvement focused. It's the best decision I've ever made and has offered me some great career development." Wainwright has begun a company-sponsored MSc in operations excellence to supplement her work. NCT's CI challenge is a common one, explains Wainwright. "The raw hide price has gone up and you can't push that all down to your supply chain." Wainwright has responded by dividing the site into seven lean zones and anointed a champion for each. Improvements are steered from her all-new manufacturing hub – a white Perspex-clad command centre that beams like a shrine against the dull browns of surrounding liming drums. The shopfloor gathers here at 9am and 3pm daily to discuss improvements in line flow, OEE, quality or maintenance. Performance is monitored through traffic light target boards with 5S scores fuelling intensive intra-competition between the seven teams. The target boards have taken on a green hue of late, with production throughput soaring 30% since the scheme's inception. Momentum is apparent everywhere. A desalting machine running around 110 hides/ hour in 2012 now exceeds 150 thanks to a blend of lean training, electronic downtime recording and visual throughput/OEE screens. Things were very different 18 months ago, reflects Wainwright. "I think when we started out people thought: 'Oh here we go again, another fad," she recalls. "When we talked about 5S I remember thinking: 'do they think this woman has come in and just wants to keep the place tidy?'. But we tried to focus on the improvement and control for employees in their own area. It was someone coming to listen and the biggest thing you heard on the shopfloor was: 'Ach, I've been telling them that for years'." Wainwright broke the silence with mandatory ideas log books in each of her lean areas. "The whole idea is that they are answered." she explains. "It might not be viable right now, but we recognise your idea, thank you. When we do go ahead with something, we celebrate that on the 5S notice board." Wainwright's munificent managerial style has fuelled her rapid transformation from shopfloor curiosity to respected confidant. "It's really great out on the shopfloor. We are a smaller workforce so everyone is very friendly but respectful. If ask them to do something then the reaction is no different to me than it would be to a male manager," she explains. One exchange symbolises her grassroots rapport. "Not wearing your high heels today?", jokes an operator as Wainwright is photographed for this article."We never see you out here anyway," he adds. Wainwright refuses to bite. Instead, she gives a serene smile before pointing to her safety boots, which bear the heavy scuffing that comes from covering every last inch of the shopfloor on her daily gemba walks. Actions speak louder than words, all right. Wainwright will no doubt share such insights on the nuances of factory floor culture with colleagues on her two-year Operations Excellence course at Cranfield University. "The chance to do the masters has been a huge opportunity for me," she enthuses. "However, I'm most proud that when we put our companies forward to host a group project as part of the course, students decided to come to NCT when they could have gone to Rolls-Royce." It's not hard to picture fellow students already half way up the M6 before Wainwright finished her appeal to come to Renfrewshire. "Within NCT you're getting involved in everyone's department – operations, technical, quality. You can see the value added difference from making improvements." Having successfully convinced one audience, Wainwright will now tackle another. The 28-year-old has agreed to visit local schools as a female manufacturing champion as part of WM's Females in Factories campaign. "I would definitely encourage young people when they are making decisions on their career to look into manufacturing. It isn't rigid, the opportunities you've got within a factory vary widely... When I was at school, manufacturing and operations wasn't put to you as an option." Time to banish gender sterotyping The disconnect didn't stop Wainwright stumbling upon manufacturing. However, countless others can't count themselves so lucky. Gender stereotyping is rife in the classroom. Nearly 50% of state funded co-ed schools sent no girls at all to do A-level physics, a breeding ground for future engineers, according to Institute of Physics research in 2012. Only 51% of female STEM graduates like Wainwright go onto work in related jobs compared to 68% of males and just 4.1% of manufacturing and engineering apprenticeships were completed by girls in 2011, other industry statistics show. The Bernard Manning brigade can tut over bra burning in the factory car park as much as they like. But a UK manufacturing sector stifled by chronic skills shortages simply can't go on tolerating turning off half the available talent pool by the age of 14. With Kirsty Wainwright and her kin heading for our classrooms, maybe in the future we won't have to. "If more people were aware of the great opportunities in manufacturing, the challenging, interesting day-to-day things you go through with CI and operations, anybody would want to work here," she enthuses. "I've got a friend who works in HR and another who's a doctor. When we talk about our jobs they remark: 'Your job sounds really interesting'. It is." Sign up to WM's Females in Factories campaign Are you a female manufacturing manager with a love of factory life or do you work alongside a female colleague who exemplifies manufacturing excellence? If so Works Management wants to hear from you as we launch our Females in Factories campaign to debunk the damaging myth that manufacturing is a job for the boys. Our gender bias exacerbates skill shortages and ultimately harms UK factory's ability to compete on the world stage. WM will strive to set the record straight through a series of inspirational case study interviews celebrating the trailblazing women who are forging outstanding careers in industry. We are also aiming to recruit 25 female manufacturing champions who will volunteer to visit local schools through existing industry outreach schemes and inspire young female pupil to pursue a career in production. Sign up to the campaign at www.worksmanagement/fif or by emailing mgosney@findlay.co.uk WM's Females in Factories campaign will complement the government's Your Life campaign launched this month that aims to deliver a step-change in how women and girls view engineering careers by asking businesses to commit to promotional activities targeted at females and encouraging greater participation in science, technology, engineering and maths among women.