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BFA conference is one of the best
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18/03/2008
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The Best Factory Awards conference, held March 11-12 at Kenliworth, has been hailed a massive success by delegates, sponsors and the organisers – Cranfield School of Management and Works Management.
The event, held at Chesford Grange in Warwickshire, gave nearly 200 people the opportunity to hear from the winners of the awards in 2007. Delegates came from a number of sectors, including food and drink, aerospace, automotive, pharmaceutical and engineering. Businesses small and large were represented, not only by those attending the conference, but also in the speakers.
Dr Marek Szwejczewski of Cranfield School of Management opened the conference with details on previous entrants and winners. Factory of the year can only come from one of the four sector winners, and he described how the mix between the four sectors has changed – with more “process” and “household and general goods” entrants now than when BFA began in 1992. Last year’s winners in the four sectors came from “UK, USA and ‘joint’ owned companies” said Dr Szwejczewski. Indeed UK owned companies have taken one of the major sector awards three times in the last two years, and the engineering sector, for example, “four times in the last eight years”. Szwejczewski said that the title of ‘Factory of the year’ has not been dominated by any one sector – winners having come from all four, nor by ownership from any one geographical area. In fact in joint ‘first place’ is UK ownership – a UK owned company has won six times since 1992. He also showed statistics from the invaluable benchmarking report, demonstrating that the winners have significantly better performance than the profile of other entrants over a number of key metrics – they really are the best.
Overall winner in 2007 was Reckitt Benckiser and Alan Brooke, regional supply director for northern Europe told the audience how the site’s organisation, focus on waste, use of training and a people monitor all helped the site win the Factory of the year award.
Day one then brought presentations from Sharp Interpack on safety culture; strategy, from Rencol Tolerance Rings; a three-way presentation, offering different perspectives on the BFA process from APPH Runcorn Landing Gears; and finished with a candid appraisal of life at a former BFA winner, 2006 Factory of the year Vitacress Salads. Mike Rushworth, operations director said “it felt great to win, but there is much more to do”, and highlighted how spending money on training for employees gives him: “at least ten times ROI”.
People, and training was a theme for both days, and that evening’s networking dinner was no different, and was also a massive success, with many opportunities for further exchange of ideas, contacts and interesting anecdotes as the delegates mixed with sponsors and previous winners in the packed event. And speaker Monty Halls, an ex-Royal Marine, winner of Channel 4’s “Superhuman” and now TV-adventurer, wowed the group with his stories of how teams perform in some of the most extreme environments – swimming with sharks for example.
Day two was introduced by Professor Mike Sweeney of Cranfield. He spoke about flexibility in manufacturers, which led nicely to Gordon Holden, MD of Exception PCB describing how his business focuses on quick turnaround to customers. Later presentations from Selex Galileo, KeyMed (Medical and Industrial equipment) and Ultraframe (UK) supported the flexibility theme. Indeed Mike Price, Tony Smith and Andy Crowe of Ultraframe presented a superb example of a programme for improvement with a clear vision, a lean manufacturing example project, and the improved metrics as a result. As Price concluded, the BFA benchmarking report: “highlights areas of strong performance and potential areas for improvement”.
Many of the speakers also attended the conference as delegates, including Les Todd of Rocket Medical, winner of the innovation award. Todd said that it was: “a very well run conference”. All delegates provided feedback on every speaker, and Todd added honestly that he was “not entirely looking forward to the feedback, but that is the only way to improve”. It must be said that although the confidence of each speaker varied, delegate feedback on all speakers was very good. This proves exactly why BFA is the best awards programme for manufacturers, as it really promotes improvement throughout the programme.
The event was sponsored by O2, productivity Europe, TBM Consulting Group, Toyota Materials Handling (UK), Unite the Union and Wincanton.
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Author
Chris Rowlands
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