Wrekin Sheet Metal

Recruiting With Conviction: How Seeing What’s on the Inside is Providing a Novel Solution to Local Recruitment Challenges

Wrekin Sheet Metal — 31/01/2020

Pioneering businesswoman Claire Robinson came up with a novel approach when faced with addressing an ever-tightening labour market and ever-growing skills shortages: she went to prison!

Not that the Wrekin Sheetmetal owner had done anything wrong – far from it. From contacts she had made as a member of Made in the Midlands Made Equal campaign, Claire became aware of the range of talent available amongst those leaving prisons and desperately looking for a fresh start. She linked up with the community team at Drake Hall women’s prison in Staffordshire who told Claire about the Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL) scheme, which gives serving prisoners the chance to go out to work on day release from prison – and employers a low-risk opportunity to effectively offer a ‘try before you buy’ trial.

She couldn’t have been more delighted with the result. Speaking to Made in the Midlands Claire said:

"I was intrigued by the scheme and had an opportunity to visit the prison to meet some of the women who were eligible to work under ROTL. It was clear to me just how keen they were to impress so when I had a vacancy come up in my admin support team, I didn’t hesitate to offer one them an opportunity to work for me."

Claire’s ROTL experience was so positive that when she was looking for skilled production staff, she didn’t hesitate to contact the regional prison team to see if there were any welders looking for work and was delighted when another site within the region – Hewell near Redditch – sent her the details of a ROTL eligible prisoner who was able to travel to Telford each day to put in a full shift. Claire continues:

“The candidate from Hewell sent over to meet me didn’t quite have the skills/experience of a fully-fledged welder so I offered him a trainee position. He’s grabbed the opportunity with both hands by working incredibly hard and has already become what I can only describe as an artist”.

Businesses are already taking advantage

Across England and Wales, 70,000 people are released from prisons each year, often with a huge appetite to work and ambition to lead a crime-free life. With such a strong focus on rehabilitation and preventing reoffending, prisons now focus on preparing them for employment not only by supplying training, but also a strong work ethic. The expectation is that these ex-offenders will go on to secure jobs, potentially with a business who has trained them.

Organisations such as Greggs, Halfords and Timpsons have already realised the benefits of recruiting from this pool of candidates – many of which are looking for a second chance to live a law-abiding life.

There are many success stories such as those experienced by local company Wrekin Sheet metals. National chain Halfords, for example, has recruited 12 women from their academy at Drake Hall as bike technicians.

What are the benefits?

Training programmes and employment opportunities are created to build a rehabilitative culture. When inmates come towards the end of their sentence, their basic rights and everything that characterises them are built back up, such as trust and responsibility. These skills are vital for anyone in the workplace.

Many companies often find that these individuals have higher attendance rates and lower sickness absence than the average employee because they have a lot more to prove and to give back to the community.

Laurence Scott is the Regional Employment Broker for the Prison Service’s New Futures Network that helps offenders get into employment.

When asked about whether businesses can put their trust in prisoners, he said: “Prisoners are heavily screened and matched against each opportunity we work on: we ensure those who are put forward for opportunities have the right attitude, aptitude and outlook and the proof it works is in us having an ever-growing network of employers who come back to us time and again to recruit the talent they are looking for - just like Claire has.”

How you can get involved?

If you are interested in providing training in prisons or hiring an ex-offender, please visit https://offenderemployment.campaign.gov.uk/ or contact laurence.scott@justice.gov.uk.

Next Issue: we look at how prisons in the west midlands region are delivering the training to help address the chronic skills shortages being experienced across the manufacturing sector in the region.

Can SME Manufacturers benefit from Industry 4.0?

Wrekin Sheet Metal — 01/04/2022

Is Industry 4.0 the domain of the big manufacturing corporates or can SME’s leverage real competitive advantage from digital transformation?

Early Adopter

Wrekin Sheet Metal is an established business in Telford that fabricates and finishes components and products from steel and aluminium predominantly. The business is recognised for the efficiency with which it satisfies customer orders, particularly in the current landscape of tactical supply chain management. Their innovative outlook saw them embrace Industry 4.0 early. While some believed this would only benefit corporates, they are seeing real competitive advantage.

Lean manufacturing

In the corporate world of manufacturing Industry 4.0 sees integration of disparate IT systems and technologies delivering the digitisation of entire value chains. However, Wrekin Sheet Metal saw Industry 4.0 transition as an opportunity to digitise certain areas of their operation to support core organisational strategies. One of these was to create a lean digitised manufacturing process that would create a set of unique and valuable competitive advantage from improving environmental impact to predicting when to order raw materials and ensuring orders were delivered to time and budget.

The Journey

The transition to Industry 4.0 requires both vision and investment. “It’s important that this is driven from the top down with a keen eye on the benefits digitisation brings and the return on investment it generates,” explains John Kennedy, Operations Director. “The advantages we see are spread across the organisation. Our processes give us real time data that allows us to understand current operational efficiencies and supports our continuous improvement ethos.”

Transition requires initial foresight and an innovative outlook. “Our board is progressive, so introducing Industry 4.0 as a cornerstone of the strategic plan for success may not have been as arduous as those who are working in companies with a more traditional outlook. While the transition aligned with our future strategic roadmap, we also needed to be clear how the digitalisation process would safeguard economic, social and environmental sustainability. Practical issues including staffing and data cyber security all need to be addressed,” explains John.

Wrekin Sheet Metal’s transition to Industry 4.0 has been smooth as they saw the process as a journey rather than a destination. Their journey continues using big data to drive continued excellence and enhancing efficiencies.

Disruptive

Industry 4.0 transition has revolutionised the manufacturing process at Wrekin Sheetmetal creating an environment that is both adaptive and customer centric. It informs new business models that make the company truly disruptive in the market place. Their transformation has bridged the gap between high level information technology and floor level operational technology. This brings intelligent data insights that powers innovative adaptability across their factory.

They can control materials flow automatically to eliminate downtime and operate at the lowest level of inventory possible. They are also able to adapt line conditions, down conditions, material supply, and other variables automatically.

Effective MES

At the heart of Wrekin Sheet Metal’s Industry 4.0 strategy is a tailored Manufacturing Execution System (MES). This provides effective monitoring and synchronisation throughout the factory to achieve high productivity and ensure responsiveness to market demand. Wrekin Sheet Metal use high speed internet connectivity, high quality software and reliable controllers tailored to their metal fabrication plant. The system provides a holistic overview of their production environment that informs maintenance plans and energy efficiency measures. It delivers complete, accurate and accessible data from the shop floor allowing management decisions to be based upon real time data. “We can track production for each and every client from raw materials to finished goods. This is critical as it provides us with detailed insight into current conditions on the plant floor allowing us to optimise production output. It gives us control to meet production KPIs from downtime management for overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) through to production analysis, resource scheduling and materials track and trace,” reveals John.

Predicting the future

Wrekin Sheet Metal’s experience of adopting Industry 4.0 has been transformational. It has informed reduction of operation costs and increases in efficiencies that would not have been possible without the big data their system provides. SMEs across manufacturing can gain significant competitive advantage adopting Industry 4.0. This should not be viewed as the corporate domain. SMEs should look at Industry 4.0 and begin to embrace the data it can bring. Effective analysis of the data and prudent management decisions are all part of the process. An innovative management team that drive Industry 4.0 culture through the organisation is as important as the technology. Wrekin Sheetmetal are already predicting where this can take their industry in the future. While the data being collected is descriptive telling them what is happening on the shop floor they are managing it to provide diagnostic information about their plant to inform prescriptive measures. However they increasingly are using their information dashboards to gain predictive insight and make future investment to enhance their business models and competitive advantage further. Connecting big data and machine learning analytics is set to deliver intelligent data round the clock providing constant insight into current and future operational performance, driving progress, quality, compliance, and innovation.

WSM begins a new era with powder coating facility and millennial business leader

Wrekin Sheet Metal — 30/06/2020

Telford based metal manufacturer Wrekin Sheetmetal has taken the COVID-19 pandemic into both hands, and has invested into a new powder coating facility and soon to be sister company “The Powder Coaters.” The new high-tech facility will increase the company's capabilities, improve the firm's efficiency, and will see a new millennial business leader.

Wrekin Sheet Metal is a premier sheet metal fabrication company who is able to punch, fold, weld and finish to an array of requirements. With over 40,000 sq ft of workshops, design studios and assembly areas, the firm pride itself on being able to provide a bespoke service to specify to customer’s exact needs.

The new powder coating facility will include a 3-stage pre-treatment plant and an exceptionally efficient conveyor fast exceeds the quality of painting and lead time expectations Wrekin Sheet Metal is used to receiving. To ensure they can offer customers the best service, they have invested in one of the top suppliers of paint booths and designed and manufactured other areas of the plant themselves, creating a bespoke design to meet customer specifications with a Nordson colormax paint booth.

With their Nordson ColorMax paint booth, the colour change can be delivered in as short as 5 minutes, allowing Wrekin Sheetmetal to deliver superb quality and quantity without limitations.

Wrekin Sheet Metal started their development plan back in January after discovering they were limiting their customer base by not offering in house powder coating.

Poppy Durnall, Operations Director of The Powder Coaters, Wrekin Sheetmetal’s newly established sister company, is only 27 years old and invested her own funds to start the company’s new journey.

Talking about what customers can expect from their new facility, Poppy said:

“Our new powder coating plant has been designed to maximise efficiency, with a competitive track running speed and exceptional quality at each stage of the powder coating process”.

Poppy and the team at Wrekin Sheet Metal used lockdown time to plan the new facility and what it will offer, using a time of uncertainty to take control and get excited about the future.

Poppy said:

“As it turns out, those first few weeks of lockdown and downtime were a blessing. We actually reanalysed what we wanted to achieve with our plant to widen our customer base, such as a faster track, double pass curing oven and finishing options and the modifications we would need to make to enable these.”

Tapping into opportunities during this time, the team also applied for a grant from the Government for Central Business Finance which they received within 3 months and invested in powder coating technology.

Next year the firm will take steps to commission their second line and officially launch their new powder coating sister company - stabilising the development of Wrekin.

Poppy hopes to modernise this new leg of the business to exceed customer’s current expectations, she said:

“I hope to modernise the new business by bringing it in line with the revolution of Industry 4.0 within manufacturing such as paperless work procedures, programming machinery offsite and more reliability than previously offered in such a traditional industry.

Join our virtual festival - Backing Britain Live 2020 from 17th-28th August to visit Wrekin Sheet Metal's virtual booth. Click here to find out more and get your tickets.