Continuing the Journey to Operational Excellence

Continuing the Journey to Operational Excellence

The Sharing in Growth (SiG) team spent a morning with North Yorkshire based business Marshall Slingsby Advanced Composites (MSAC) recently to review their various Continuous Improvement (CI) developments over the past 12 months.

SiG CEO, Malcolm James joined the embedded SiG team in their annual review of various CI improvements the business has made, and saw excellent progress.

The SiG scheme provides concentrated training and development programmes tailored to the assessed needs of companies and targeted at world class standards of performance in a number of areas, including lean operations, manufacturing processes, purchasing, cost modelling and leadership.

Carl Morse, managing Director of MSAC said, “Huge thanks to Malcolm and the SiG team for their outstanding help and support over the last 12 months, where we’ve seen significant improvements operationally. We’re always looking for ways to improve, to do things better, to improve our capabilities and our services, so it’s a tremendous benefit for us to continue to work closely with SIG. The entire team has thoroughly enjoyed it."

MSAC has a number of key defence projects spanning three to five years, including the building of missile launch tubes, C-130J aircraft cockpit panels and propeller duct and rudder assembly for nuclear class submarines.

It already has some of the most advanced equipment and technical know-how in the composites manufacturing and aerospace market. It has been working with SiG over recent years to identify areas for continuous improvement and leaner processes.

Today, the company employ 130 employees at their secure facility in Kirkbymoorside, in North Yorkshire, UK, where they are a major local employer.

They are also part of the privately owned Marshall Group, headquartered in Cambridge, employing a global team of over 2,000 highly skilled people at locations in the UK, Northern Europe, North America and Middle East.

Marshall, which owns a broad portfolio of businesses in the Aerospace and Defence, Fleet Management, Property and Education sectors, boasts a rich heritage with aviation dating back to 1912 when its mechanics played a key role in the repair of the British Army Airship Beta II.

Since then, the Marshall name has become synonymous with the defence industry, not least because of its long history of apprenticeships that has seen it launch the careers of over 20,000 apprentices, lots of whom remain in the business and many of whom have gone on forge amazing careers elsewhere in the industry.

Despite its long and illustrious past, the Marshall of today is very firmly focused on the future, finding and developing the next generation of talent, investing in record levels of R&D spend and harnessing emerging technologies to solve its customers’ problems, support local communities and protect our planet.