Government troubleshooter cuts costs for Alcon

Motor sport supplier maintains its competitive edge thanks to support from the Government's Manufacturing Advisory Service.

As the first choice supplier to the international motor sport industry, Tamworth-based Alcon is on-track to achieve record sales of over GBP 7 million in the next year thanks to assistance from the Government's manufacturing troubleshooter the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS).

With a customer base including Honda F1, Nascar teams and the entire Indycar grid, the company is at the forefront of a highly competitive marketplace, supplying brake discs and callipers for leading Formula1 and World Rally Championship racing teams, as well as high end specialist road car customers.

But improved manufacturing technology has enabled its global competitors to advance, and recently, Alcon's marketplace has become much more challenging as competitors have started to offer competitively priced, inferior quality alternatives.

The British manufacturer called on MAS to help reduce the cost of its manufacturing processes.

MAS successfully helped to increase efficiency within Alcon's brake disc manufacturing cells, highlighted shop floor layout issues, and used the Japanese principles of 5S to improve the overall working environment.

The team at Alcon are now working towards a programme of continuous improvement in other manufacturing areas.

14 hours a day of time saving activities have been achieved across the manufacturing cells, resulting in productivity improvement of 20% that enables Alcon to work faster, more efficiently and keep costs down.

David Fuller, Alcon Operations Manager, said: "As a company we have invested heavily in R and D and advanced manufacturing operations in order to achieve the highest levels of product performance and quality, and our collaborative relationships with customers such as Honda F1, Bentley and Jaguar have ensured our products are at the forefront of automotive design".

"However, increasing global competition has meant that despite our success, we had to reduce the cost of production without compromising on quality and performance and MAS helped us to do this".

He concludes: "The service's help has been invaluable in allowing us to continue to manufacture innovative products but in a more cost effective way".

"We are now in a much more competitive position and this gives us a platform to achieve our ambitious future growth plans".

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