Gwynne was shown how the company had embarked on an ambitious growth plan supported by SiG. The Hyde team has worked alongside SiG’s global manufacturing experts to implement best practice, which in turn has helped the company to win several new customers.
Since joining the SiG programme, the Hyde team has created a new strategy, changed its leadership practices and improved its operational performance significantly through a newly implemented culture of continuous improvement. Achieving up to a 50% increase productivity across key areas of its business has allowed Hyde to increase turnover by 28% and invest in its future. This strategy includes recruiting 60 additional employees and increasing apprenticeship hiring from three to 25, a number that is now targeted to grow continually year-on-year.
On his factory tour, Gwynne saw some of the latest investment, including £1 million worth of state-of-art machining technology, and heard how Hyde and the SiG team had designed and built a new machining cell that will now be replicated to provide 50% more capacity for additional growth.
“Continuous improvement is a great learning opportunity for everyone,” said Gwynne. “It creates a learning culture which helps drive up UK productivity. Sadly, UK productivity has been sluggish and needs to improve to compete with the rest of the world. No company has a given right to win contracts. Like Hyde, you have to keep moving forward because, if you don’t compete, then you won’t have a company.”
Leading the tour, VPE managing director Scott Murray showed how SiG tools, such as visual management boards, had helped increase output in his plant four-fold; supplying key aerospace programmes such as the Airbus A350 and A400M: “Through Sharing in Growth we have adopted best practice tools, techniques and ways of managing that is giving us sustainable operational advantage.”
Hyde Aero Products joint managing director Matthew Smallman added: “It was great to be able to demonstrate how Sharing in Growth has transformed the way we think and what we do, and helped every one of us achieve fantastic results. We are probably the largest private company in the area, so it’s essential that we continue to improve and grow in the same way that the UK aerospace industry must be supported to improve and grow.”
There are limited places left on the government supported Sharing in Growth programme. Companies interested in how the programme can improve their competitiveness and productivity should click here to register.
