Optical components company presented with best practice award for increasing output to 29 per cent at Fife factory
High tech manufacturer G&H Glenrothes has won a national best practice award from productivity experts Sharing in Growth (SiG) for achieving record output.
The Fife-based company, which is part of the G&H Group, employs around 70 highly skilled staff making precision optical components. SiG was established in 2013 to help UK suppliers win a larger share of the booming global aerospace market. G&H was congratulated on the achievement by the Scottish Parliament through a motion proposed by Jenny Gilruth, MSP for Mid Fife and Glenrothes.
To celebrate their success, G&H invited Ms Gilruth and other VIPs, including David Thorpe of Scottish Enterprise and Pamela Stevenson of Fife Council, to tour the factory, meet staff and hear how the G&H team won the Sharing in Growth All STAR award.
G&H Glenrothes took on the target of increasing output by 23 per cent in 2018 as part of the global G&H advanced optical engineering and manufacturing group. As the target represented double their previous growth rate, they had recognised the need for specialist support.
Profits show 200 per cent improvement year-on-year
G&H Glenrothes worked with Sharing in Growth (SiG), the government-backed competitiveness improvement programme, to implement manufacturing techniques, such as value stream mapping, waste elimination and continuous flow production.
With SiG training in lean manufacturing, the team rose to the challenge and beat the target by delivering a 29 per cent increase in output and a 200 per cent improvement on year-on-year profits. They also achieved record monthly sales and demonstrated a determination to fulfil the company’s global vision of being the customers’ first choice for precision optics. The changes meant they were more competitive and, as a result, the company has secured £16 million in contracts and are now recruiting for additional engineers.
29 per cent growth achieved
SiG’s experts presented G&H Glenrothes with a best practice award this week by SiG director Nick Devey at the Fife factory. G&H Glenrothes general manager Mark Merigot said: “The Glenrothes team faced the monumental challenge of increasing output by 23 per cent in a year. With huge support from Sharing in Growth’s experienced coaches, the team stepped up, took a disciplined approach to define, measure, analyse, improve and control their processes and achieved a fantastic 29 per cent growth and, by doing so, set an important baseline upon which to improve further.”
To date, SiG has helped suppliers like G&H, secure more than £4 billion in contracts by supporting them to improve their leadership, culture and operational capability. The initiative has proved so successful that SiG has been granted additional public funding to offer new places on the awarding-winning programme to ambitious advanced manufacturing firms.
