Manufacturing

The roots of Walker-Cox lie in Manufacturing and manufacturing know-how.  For over 30 years, this sector has been subject to almost continuous change.  The pressures driving that change have fundamentally been driven by globalisation.  The need to be competitive in Global supply chains and global markets has driven UK manufacturing capability to become one of the fittest sectors in the world.  Our manufacturing management has faced every challenge with innovation and energy.  In general, our capability now has:

  • Internationally competitive labour practices and manpower performance.
  • Least cost Lean product design and manufacturing capability.
  • Consistent World Class quality capability
  • Environmentally world leading processes.
  • Global Supply Chain Management capability
  • Flexible capacity and costs
  • Skills resources
  • Know-how and Intellectual Property (IP) management
  • Managed barriers to entry

We were one of the first countries to recognize the benefits of Global thinking and we now have some of Global thinking and we now have some of the most capable Global manufacturing managers.

 

Sector Services

Our services play a major role in the Continuous Improvement process.  We have access to over 300 Manufacturing professionals that our clients call on to support the process of change.  Our clients want:

  • Board members with Global Supply Chain experience, vision and innovation.
  • Professionals in Lean, Six Sigma, Productivity
  • Technical experts in Modern System Techniques such as Taguchi, Genba Kanri, Continuous Improvement etc…
  • Project Managers to move, reshape, rebuild capacity and capability.
  • Production and Industrial Engineers to get the very best from existing investments.
  • Trainers and Facilitators in new techniques.
  • IT professionals with real understandings of MRP, MRP2 and ERP planning concepts.
  • Factory managers driving the expectations of quality, cost and delivery performance to ever new heights.
  • Experts in total lifetime cost reduction in Engineering, Procurement, Manufacturing, Assembly and Logistics.

Typical Walker-Cox Assignments

Our clients use us throughout the whole manufacturing supply chain.  Our recent assignments have included placing people in the following roles:-

  • Managing Directors
  • Finance Directors and Controllers.
  • Engineering Directors and senior engineering staff
  • Scientists
  • Operations Director(s) Global and Local.
  • Production Director(s)
  • Factory Managers and General Managers
  • Business strategists and Planners
  • Business Development Managers
  • Master Black, Black and Green Belts in Six Sigma.
  • Lean experts
  • Procurement experts
  • Supply Chain professionals
  • Cost reduction professionals
  • HR Specialists
  • Outplacement specialists
  • Programme and Project Managers

Some of the many techniques we are supplying to manufacturing clients include:

  • Design For Manufacture and Assembly DFMA
  • Simultaneous engineering
  • Leadtime compression
  • SPC, FMEA, Taguchi, Poke Yoke, QFD, Kanban, SMED, CI, Cellular Manufacture, Visual Control, Line balancing, MRP, MRPZ, ERP
  • Bottleneck scheduling
  • CAD
  • Lean, Six Sigma, Black Belts, Green belts.
  • Incentives, design, redesign and extraction.
  • Productivity and unit labour cost improvement.
  • Lean Supply Chain
  • Global supply
  • Purchase cost reduction
  • JIT
  • Systems approaches
  • Activity sampling, rated activity sampling
  • Time standards, PMTS
  • Method study
  • Standard working practices
  • Best Operating practices
  • Value stream mapping
  • Sales cost contribution analysis
  • ABC costing and zero based budgeting
  • Product strategies
  • ISO9000, ISO14000
  • QFD
  • IP Spin-outs

We have extensive manufacturing capability and our consultants can talk with qualified authority, on the issues that face the sector, and Continuous Improvement strategies.