Networks do work

At the BPN knowledge sharing conference held at BMW’s Cowley plant on November 21, manufacturers from across the SE region, some members of the BPN already, others seeking to find out what is going on, heard the good news not just from MAS, but from their peers. Mark Knowlton, a partner manager at MAS SE explained the BPN aims and purpose: “Having spoken to manufacturers, they wanted to have local networks and one meeting a year” he says, so the BPN is aimed at providing just such a local network, with collaboration between businesses, and MAS is there to help “those who want to help themselves” says Knowlton. Indeed, David Caddle, of MAS SE, said : “The Best Practice Network is a key component of the MAS service.” Knowlton added that “there are six active networks in the South East, with 60 active members, and MAS has calculated £10m value added in the last 12 months”. The network also includes a self-assessed lean benchmarking health check: “not a general businesses diagnostic, but focused on lean,” says Knowlton, and a number of companies at the conference were presented with an award for demonstrating “a commitment to continuous improvement”. One such winner was Cummins Power Generation of Ramsgate, and manufacturing engineering and CI manager Mark Bown spoke to the audience. “In our Kent plant we have trained over 300 people” he said, in skills such as 5S, Six Sigma and Value Stream Mapping, and the business is now looking at a supply chain transformation project. And Simon Waller, factory manager at Broadstairs based Silent Gliss, also an award winner, described the way the business originally approached lean. “We were throwing lean grenades everywhere” he said. This was in a good way though, the business used lean to help move in just two days into a new factory, and now it has a clear lean vision, as Waller says, “to do the simple things”.