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Training brings about culture change

A Technology Innovation Centre product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team May 5, 2006

Reorganisation of its UK distribution network has seen steel-giant Corus award Birmingham-based Knight Strip Metals a contract to process and distribute plated mild steel products throughout the UK.

Reorganisation of its UK distribution network has seen steel-giant Corus award Birmingham-based Knight Strip Metals a contract to process and distribute plated mild steel products throughout the UK.

High-quality, plated products from Corus' US-based mild steel strip subsidiary, Apollo Metals' plant, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, are to be marketed through Knight's main processing plant, on Saltley's Business Park.

Having rationalised plated-steel distribution in UK, Corus needed a well-established metals processing and distribution organisation to handle its brass, chrome, copper and nickel plated strip products in the UK and Ireland.

After considering a range of options it chose Knight Strip Metals.

Knight Group's Technical Director Alan Woodhouse says: "We're ideally geared to handle this business".

"Following our acquisition of Charles Harbage and the move to Saltley, we undertook world-class manufacturing training for all our UK staff".

"Carried out by Birmingham's Technology Innovation Centre (TIC), it has transformed our operating efficiency".

"We were good before - now we know we're very good".

"Winning this Corus business confirms that".

All Knight's 70 staff, in both its Birmingham and Potters Bar operations, were trained over a period of 18 months by the Millennium Point-based TIC's world-class manufacturing team.

After 65 progressive years, Knight group has now fully embraced TIC's portfolio of lean techniques with its staff fully trained and equipped.

It is seeing customer service, quality and productivity all advance significantly.

With savings already running into six figures, Knight's radical MD, David Pearson, comments: "We now put training first".

"TIC has helped achieve a crucial culture change".

"Future benefits for everyone will come from the productivity and added-value we've achieved".

The Corus plated-strip business-win seems to confirm the company in its new confidence and promises to be a prelude to exciting developments still to come.

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