A former craft apprentice, Cunningham is a big supporter of ‘strength in numbers’ and believes the group’s ability to share sales opportunities/best practice, stronger purchasing power and manufacturing expertise has been pivotal in helping it withstand economic uncertainty and secure work from overseas.
“We are fairly unique in being able to bring together such a wide diversity of engineering disciplines under one banner,” says Cunningham, who started his career with Concentric Pumps in Birmingham. “Our core philosophy is to work together to win new contracts, as this is what keeps us all in business and, over the years, we’ve been very successful in doing that. A recent order from the renewables sector has actually taken us over £75 million of sales for the group.”
He adds: “However, that’s in the past and the focus is very much on the future and looking at new markets which lend themselves to our strengths. Electrification is one of these and we’re leveraging our relationship with WMG to make real strides in this market, while alternative powertrains are also presenting a number of new opportunities.
“The other thing I want to pursue under my stewardship is how more member companies can introduce automation and robotics into their processes to increase productivity and competitiveness. This isn’t at the expense of jobs, quite the opposite. If we can work smarter, we can win more contracts and, in turn, create new positions.”
MAN was established using funding from Advantage West Midlands (AWM - the then Regional Development Agency) to help combat industrial uncertainty in the area. When AWM was disbanded, member firms decided to carry on with MAN, agreeing to self-fund the collaboration and, today, the collective features Alucast, Barkley Plastics, Brandauer, C-MAC SMT, Grove Design, Kimbermills International, Muller Holdings, PP Control & Automation and Ricor.
The group enjoys more than £150 million of combined sales annually and employs over 1,600 people, offering every engineering discipline imaginable, including automation and control systems, forging, plastic injection moulding, PCB development, precision machining, product and mechanical system design, high-volume pressings and welded assemblies.
“Running a manufacturing business can be a very lonely place at times, so to have eight other MDs to share your pain and elation with can be an extremely valuable asset,” says Cunningham. “We often use it as a sounding board to test out new ideas, to cross train our apprentices and look at how we can work to promote engineering and manufacturing to young people. The success of the MAN ‘Design & Make Challenge’, involving 12 high schools, is an example of companies tackling the skills agenda head-on.”
Cunningham has been involved in industry since 1980, starting his career as an apprentice at Concentric Pumps before taking positions at Henley Foundries, Robson Precision, Auto Tools and Rubberneck Fittings. In 2002, he joined Muller Holdings as works manager for its Birmingham site, quickly getting promoted to operations director.
The former apprentice took over as MD of Muller Redditch in February 2007 and, in recent months, has been appointed as CEO of Muller Holdings, responsible for the group’s ongoing expansion in CNC milling, turning, multi-spindle and CNC/conventional Swiss-type lathe manufacturing services.
