Machined component superstore saves on costs

'A contract machined component superstore' is how precision machining company describes itse service of holding machined parts in store for release as required by its customers.

The business of HPC (Services) is best described by managing director Paul Cobb as a contract machined component superstore.

Such is the close relationship between the small band of regular customers that HPC is totally confident to run its machine shop to constantly fuel its 'lean purchase' philosophy.

Completed parts are then held in the finish parts stores where customers simply call for delivery and receive them the next day.

Cobb has set the system so his machine tools are producing through three shifts a day - six days a week.

Work schedules are devised to maximise machine utilisation and efficiencies and keep the stores between maximum and minimum stock levels.

"This means we rarely have panic jobs because a buyer has forgotten to order on time and because the production plant is never 'stretched', we can always reset and produce a new or urgent job without disruption or delaying production," he says.

HPC (Services) offers a complete machining and assembly operation and from its working relationship with customers, has generated a level of profitability that has been ploughed back into the business as investment for the future.

As a result, sales have doubled in the last three years despite the recessionary problems faced by the engineering sector.

Says Cobb: "In the first six months of 2003 we invested some GBP 500,000 and plans are afoot to further upgrade machinery to achieve higher productivity and quality levels.

We are also now adding higher value to work by performing assembly operations for customers.

HPC operates on two sites in Ilkeston, Derbyshire and was formed by Cobb's father Reg Cobb, a former quality engineer with Rolls Royce in 1997.

Paul joined his father as partner following his graduation from Worcester College, Oxford with a physics degree.

Customers tend to have a very close relationship with HPC and its portfolio comprises a spread of mainly high profile international business names in diverse sectors from printer manufacturers to luxury goods.

With a turnover of some GBP 5 million, HPC employs the skills to produce prototypes, test components and assemblies, and provides a design for production consultancy.

Once production go-ahead is given, the various components are then produced and stocked and individual special services sourced ready for customers to request the parts they need as and when required.

As Cobb outlines: "We produce some very close tolerance and complex components and around 10 per cent of our business is prototype or pre-production work.

This means of the 40 people employed, we need top machinists and CNC programmers and just as important, have to be very selective in the machine tools and equipment purchased.

Among the plant list is a twin-turret, twin-spindle Nakamura WT250MMY which produces at a single operation highly complex parts such as seals in brass, 316 stainless steel and aluminium.

Cobb defines the parts as mainly milling with token turning but here the single operation capability guarantees quality and total control over geometric relationships that could never be reproduced with separate fixturings.

Seven Citizen CNC sliding head automatic lathes are installed for shaft production between 50mm and 250mm long and up to 32mm diameter in the same materials as the Nakamura with extensive single operation 'one-hit' cycles involving milling, drilling and threading.

Five HAAS vertical machining centres and a horizontal, Kitamura H400 machining centre are engaged in the production of a wide range of tooling plates and mould components as well as production parts, while the latest Fanuc Alpha T21 Robodrill with multi-vice set ups produces a wide range of different components in steel and aluminium.

To fall into company policy, each machine has to be tooled for flexibility and fast changeover in order to accommodate batches that can vary between one and several thousand.

When the company was formed it focused on overflow type work from other contractors.

"It was always urgent and a headache and most of the orders taken were the ones no-one else wanted to supply.

Although we earned a living, we started talking to buyers at other companies and found it was service they demanded and not necessarily rock bottom prices.

This led us to devise our lean purchase operation and our focus shifted to parts we are good at making and as a result are profitable.

This produced a dramatic turn around for HPC, as Cobb concludes: "After a short time we found our profitability was rising fast and as we started letting go of our headache generating parts that had been sourced purely on price, with them went most of our problems! Higher profitability means we can afford more investment and as we are now selling a service that customers appreciate, this is repaid with a steadily rising order book.

Back to top