To win the MX Manufacturing Excellence Awards in one year is terrific. To win the top prize in two consecutive years is unprecedented. That, though, has been the achievement of Leyland Trucks, the Lancashire-based manufacturer of medium-sized trucks that is part of the worldwide Paccar group.
Leyland last month became the first company in the 28-year history of MX to take the main prize twice. And, of course, having also won in 2009, it was the first to retain the overall title.
Even more noteworthy, Leyland has achieved this double in a period of radical and often uncomfortable change as truck markets around the world suffered in the downturn. The scale of the slump, according to managing director Andrea Paver, can be measured directly in the truck business: road traffic was down 12%, volume of goods transported down 20%. Not surprisingly, purchasing decisions were delayed or cancelled or, in many cases, changed and reduced.
Leyland Trucks was by no means immune to the recession. There were production cuts and staff reductions and a lot of deft footwork to ensure the product mix was what customers wanted. Several aspects of this caught the attention of the MX Awards judges.
Leyland has scored heavily in past MX competitions for the way its financial management systems are in tune with the drivers of the manufacturing business. Its ability to react quickly to events in the downturn is a further illustration of the degree to which the company as a whole is set up to be as flexible as possible.
This past year, Paver says, particular attention was paid to ensure that IT systems were similarly in line with the overall business aims.
That flexibility extends right the way through the business model. While Leyland is responsible for some of the bigger sellers in the Leyland Daf range, much of the long-term investment in the past few years has been geared to increase radically the degree to which individual orders can be customised.
In a departure from established industry thinking, the company has set up its own bodybuilding operation within the Lancashire factory; it has also innovated in robotic chassis painting and in immersive 3D design systems for virtual prototyping. The aim, says chief engineer Denis Culloty, is to provide truck buyers with a “one-stop shop” and to be “radically different” from industry norms.
Radically different, too, was the way Leyland was able to react to a problem of unsold trucks at its dealers: it took some of them back into the factory for re-engineering into vehicles for which there were customers.
And while all of this work was going on to mitigate the effects of the recession, Leyland continued to invest in its future. The intention, says Paver, was that the company should emerge from the downturn in the best possible condition to take advantage of returning markets. That investment included a commitment to maintain its people development policies even in a time of difficulty, with personal development plans and training increased and many more meetings with staff committees to communicate the state of the business. “We have if anything a tendency to over-communicate,” Paver says.
Commitment to external community and educational work was also maintained.
And there has also been product investment. So work has accelerated on low-carbon and sustainable technologies and Leyland is on schedule to meet the legislative requirements on current types of truck and to exceed them with the debut of its first hybrid truck at the end of this year. Its work in sustainability is not just at the strategic level: there are smaller-scale local initiatives, including work with some suppliers.
The overall MX Award, sponsored by the BIS Manufacturing Advisory Service and presented by the new minister for manufacturing, Mark Prisk, at the MX Awards evening in London, always goes to a company that shows excellence across the range of the competition categories and is a true example of manufacturing excellence.
Although two other companies came close – see panel – in MX2010 as in the previous year, the winner was Leyland Trucks.
The contenders
Two other companies were strong contenders for the overall award in the MX2010 competition because they had shown world-class performance in several of categories measuring performance in the factors that make for competitiveness in manufacturing.
AESSeal is, like Leyland, a past winner of the overall award and was, again like Leyland, on the shortlist for multiple categories. The company, which makes high-technology mechanical seals for pumps and other fluid handling systems, is itself not much larger than an SME, but has enviable ambition in terms of its global reach in a competitive business. Its very strong suit is customer focus, where it took the category award in MX2010, and where, according to chief executive officer Jonathan Wilkinson, it is in danger of “loving our customers to death”. Its reward is customer satisfaction ratings “in excess of 99%”, the MX category award and very nearly the overall award in MX2010.
ZF Lemforder, the supplier of corner units, subassemblies of immense complexity and considerable variation, to Land Rover vehicles, was also a strong contender for the overall award. Its strengths were shown by the fact that it took two of the category awards in MX2010 – the WMG Award for Logistics and Resource Efficiency and the Barclays Award for Financial Management. ZF, which supplies its assemblies in a four-hour cycle “just in sequence” to Land Rover’s plant, impressed with the way it was able to flex its production to handle, as far as possible, the effects of the downturn and with the manner in which its financial systems proved robust enough for it to be able to help both suppliers and its main customer.
The audit
The MX Manufacturing Excellence Awards is an annual competition organised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers with help from a wide range of partners and sponsors. The awards are based on an extensive and exhaustive audit of best practice in the factors that lead to competitiveness in manufacturing businesses, and every entrant receives a benchmarked record of how they measure up to the best.
Category awards are made for customer focus, innovation in both product and process, logistics and resource efficiency, and the effective deployment of people. There are in addition awards for best practice in financial management, where the aim is to look at how financial matters help the manufacturing side, for integrated e-business, for business development and change management, for sustainable manufacturing, and for the best partnership between business and education.
All the categories are covered in the audit, which takes the form of a self-assessment based on questions devised by the manufacturing experts at WMG, the Warwick Manufacturing Group, under the direction of John Garside. Companies fill out as much, or as little, of the audit as they want: many firms just want to benchmark their activities against the best in breed in one category.
Once the self-assessment audits are in, they are vetted and verified by expert panels at the institution, and the top-performing companies in each category are then visited by a team of assessors who look to see whether the submission is worthy of shortlisting for an award – the assessors at the same time usually offer the entrants some valuable business advice, a kind of free consultancy session with some of the top manufacturing brains in the UK.
Shortlisted companies then come in to face the final judging panel: a half hour or more presentation to manufacturing experts at the institution headquarters in London. The judges deliberate… and the results are announced in an evening event at a top London venue.
The winners
The PricewaterhouseCoopers Award for Customer Focus
Winner: AESSeal
Commended: Lambert Engineering
The Autodesk Award for Product Innovation
Winner: Siemens Magnet Technology
Commended: Gillette
The Technology Strategy Board Award for Process Innovation
Winner: Dräger Safety UK
Commended:BAE Systems Submarines
The WMG Award for Logistics and Resource Efficiency
Winner:ZF Lemförder
The Professional Engineering Award for People Effectiveness
Winner: ContiTech Beattie
Commended:Michelin Tyres
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers Award for Business Development and Change Management
Winner: Leyland Trucks
The Barclays Award for Financial Management
Winner: ZF Lemförder
Arup Award for Sustainable Manufacturing
Winner: Brother Industries UK
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers Award for Integrated e-Business
Winner:Proto Labs
The ERA Foundation Award for the Best Partnership between Business and Education
Winner: MBDA
Commended: Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery
The National Skills Academy for Manufacturing Overall Award for the Best SME
Winner: Pipex
The BIS Manufacturing Advisory Service Overall Award for Manufacturing Excellence
Winner: Leyland Trucks
