Supplier spotlight
On a roll... With business returning to pre-pandemic levels and the company winning new contracts to supply replacement roll tooling and associated equipment to steel and copper mill customers across the world, Bowers & Jones has been on a mission to streamline and strengthen its in-house machining capacity and capabilities as a route to helping it achieve real, tangible and sustainable growth.
The company, under new ownership since 2020 and led by managing director, Jane Sommerville, and her team, is committed to continuous improvement and, as such, regularly monitors and benchmarks the performance of its manufacturing operations in order to identify ‘pinch points’ and production bottlenecks. A recent internal audit, undertaken by the company in early 2023, revealed an issue within its ‘small’ roll production operation and, in particular, highlighted the under-performance of an older mill-turn machine acquired some years earlier. “The machine was purchased for a specific
application we no longer manufacture”, says Jane. “This meant that the machine, with its relatively small working envelope, had limited value going forwards and, owing to its age, was also unreliable and prone to breakdown.” As a consequence, the company made the decision, in early 2023, to trade-in the machine, not for another mill-turn model as one might expect, but for a new, two-axis horizontal lathe instead. “Firstly, mill-turn machines are expensive. Secondly, the parts we manufacture, and the processes we have developed to manufacture
Machinery & Manufacturing 40
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