Improvement plan claws back significant savings

An Invest Northern Ireland backed scheme to help local companies become more competitive, has seen a Bangor-based company shave £250,000 off its costs over the past six months.

Munster Simms Engineering made the savings in inventory costs from a series of initiatives brokered by Invest NI including the appointment of a Business Improvement Agent (BIA).

Munster Simms, a manufacturer of manual and electrical pumps and plumbing systems for the international marine and recreational industries, signed up for the BIA Programme earlier this year as part of a continuous improvement plan to achieve savings in excess of £400,000.

Brian Batchelor, Managing Director of Munster Simms Engineering, said: “The BIA is an important initiative because it has enabled us to deploy a person to pinpoint issues and help in taking steps that will improve our product and service quality levels to existing customers and to compete more aggressively for new business.

“As a result of this sharper focus on improvement throughout the business, we’ve achieved significant benefits in a number of areas including productivity at manufacturing cell level through layout and operational changes such as the introduction of a Japanese Kan Ban system, and also improved process and material flow through implementing Kaizen principles and techniques.

Mr Batchelor also said that internal communications have benefited from the BIA’s exchange of information and ideas with employees at all levels.

The BIA programme assists companies to add significant value to their operations and position themselves for faster growth by applying knowledge-led business improvement techniques.

Invest NI and companies taking part in the programme share the salary costs of the business improvement agents over a period of three years with the intention that the company create a full-time BIA post and will fully fund the agent thereafter.

Victor Jordan, Director of Invest NI’s Business Improvement Services, said the BIA programme had been developed to help management and staff increase capability and improve the overall competitiveness of their business.

“The role of the BIA is to identify priority areas for improvement within each company and then manage the delivery of actions to improve performance," he said.

“The programme’s aim is to help individual companies to achieve a three-fold return on the total costs of employing the BIA supported by sustained improvements to processes over three years.

(SP)