Partnership to improve efficiency and create jobs

Remploy Electronics and Grundfos, one of the world's leading pump manufacturers, have embarked on an innovative manufacturing partnership that aims to both improve efficiency and create jobs.

Remploy Electronics and Grundfos, one of the world's leading pump manufacturers, have embarked on an innovative manufacturing partnership that aims to both improve efficiency and create jobs.

Under the agreement, Remploy will operate an independent, self-contained production unit at Grundfos' Leighton Buzzard facility where it will make small to medium volume quantities of specialist pump systems.

Recruitment for the new operation begins this week.

The two organisations are embarking on this enterprise on the back of successful collaborations centred on Remploy's Medway site.

An initial conventional contract manufacturing arrangement was extended to make Remploy responsible for the procurement of parts, testing and shipment of finished products direct to Grundfos customers.

This provided Grundfos with a highly flexible manufacturing resource for its specialist, lower volume items and allowed the company to make more efficient use of its highly skilled development engineering team.

These engineers could now hand off new products once they were easily "repeatable" and move on to the design and development of other projects.

Constantly seeking ways to improve manufacturing systems, Grundfos and Remploy identified logistics as the key area of opportunity for enhancing the existing process.

Both time and money were expended shipping material between the two sites and day-to-day communication between the teams was necessarily remote.

In order to address this issue, it was decided to create a Remploy unit within the Grundfos Leighton Buzzard site that is dedicated solely to Grundfos.

The resulting reduction in both supply chain and communication channel lengths will deliver reduced transportation costs while, at the same time, improving communication between design and production teams.

The latter effect is expected to reduce learning times on new products and ensure high quality levels are attained at an early stage due to the ease with which the teams can now consult.

With operations in over 50 countries, including an automated plant in Sunderland, Grundfos is a major manufacturer of pumping products and produces approximately 10 million units annually.

But the company also addresses the low volume, specialist application sector, designing innovative products at its Leighton Buzzard facility.

These designs are intended to seed the market and many move into higher volumes.

It is here that the Remploy team will provide an essential link between a handful of bespoke crafted products and the high volume, fully automated runs of Grundfos' main factories.

Remploy, the largest employer of disabled people in the UK, has similarities with Grundfos beyond the fact that both organisations are celebrating their 60th anniversaries this year.

A strong sense of corporate and social responsibility has been a fundamental part of the Grundfos history and this manifests itself today in commitments to the environment and in its policy of employing people with reduced work capabilities due to physically, mentally or socially related reasons.

However, activities undertaken must be commercially viable as the goal is to enable disabled people to make a real contribution to the economy in exactly the same way as nondisabled workers.

Gerald Young, the Local Remploy Manager at the Medway site, who is directly responsible for the new undertaking, commented: "This agreement breaks new ground and offers Remploy a significant business opportunity that could expand to create further jobs".

"It is a testament both to the success of the contract manufacturing relationship we have built with Grundfos over recent years and to Grundfos' commitment to assist disabled people play an active role in the manufacturing sector".

Huw Lloyd, Grundfos Production Manager, added: "Remploy has been flexible and open to new ideas and, in this respect, has a similar approach to that which we take with our own customers".

"This arrangement will benefit our development engineers and the Remploy team, who will have access to advice and coaching on-site".

The Remploy production unit at Grundfos Leighton Buzzard is planned to start operation at the end of June 2005.

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