The key skills associated
with a manufacturing business concern:
·
understand the manufacturing process and the
part that the costing and bill of materials systems play in this and the key
variances of actual cost to standard.
·
understand
route to market and the differences that this makes to profitability
·
the
combination of points 2 and 3 - to create financial models of
"what-if" scenarios in deciding a commercial approach to sales
opportunities
·
understand
product and process innovation and the control processes around this strategy
The
main case studies of manufacturing businesses are:
FMCG
·
Fiddes Payne Ltd, a
food manufacturer, where the products were designed in the UK and manufactured
partly abroad and partly in the UK
·
Trutex Ltd, a clothing
manufacturer where the products were designed in the UK and manufactured abroad.
About 25% of turnover involved finishing with bespoke badging and braiding,
both in-house and outsourced
·
St
Neots Packaging Ltd, a print and packaging business
that makes sandwich skillets and other food containers in the UK
·
Acco,
a manufacturer of stationery products and whose brands include Eastlight, Cumberland, Nobo, Rexel and Nyrex.
TMT
·
Ultralife Batteries (UK) Ltd,
a manufacturer of advanced lithium polymer and lithium ion batteries for
computer and communications devices in the UK and for missile telemetry systems
·
Bookham Technology plc, a manufacturer of advanced telecoms and aerospace
components in the UK
·
Interconnect Ltd, who designed products but
outsourced manufacture in the UK then assembled modular structures at client’s
sites in the UK
·
Automatic Minibars Ltd – a manufacturer of computer
command-and-control hotel minibars where the intelligent electronics were
designed and manufactured in the UK then assembled modular structures at client’s
sites across the world
Other
·
SMF Displays Ltd, a metal fabricator of bespoke
automated advertising displays – much more of an engineering exercise
than batch processing – and in the UK. During the assignment, a
manufacturing plant was set up in Malaysia for the fabrication of bus shelters
for the Singapore transport authority.