Thorn Lighting
The Zumtobel Group provides professional lighting equipment under its Zumtobel
and Thorn brands. Thorn Lighting employs 3,000 people in Europe, Asia and
Australia and has sales of €500 million. It is the market leader in the UK and has
been a client for over twenty years.
The objectives of the project
Thorn’s sprawling main plant in County Durham suffered from too many manufacturing
halls, large internal distances to cover, and poor process-flows. So Thorn was ready
to move to a new, technically advanced factory on a brown-field site. But in the
economic slowdown, big savings had to be made to justify the business case for the
move. We were asked to reconfigure the business to save £3.5 million in overheads
and staffing, direct and indirect.
A measure of our commitment
We were so confident that we could achieve the savings that we agreed to link our
fees to our performance. This reassured the client’s team that the aims were
achievable.
What we did
We worked closely with the client to create a series of vital projects:
- to design the shop floor to reduce complexity and achieve the most efficient flows
of material and information
- to reconfigure roles, responsibilities and competences to get the best from the
new layout
- to reduce overheads and analyse variable expenses to uncover costs that could be
taken out
- to evaluate the culture of the business and define the changes needed to achieve
the ideal model.
We also created and managed, in addition to these projects, a project office responsible
for controlling the physical move to the new site.
- We set milestones and planned resources and accountabilities for all aspects of
the move.
- The structure for communicating with and reporting to all stakeholders was clearly
defined.
The result: Factory of the Year 2009
The client saved even more than the £3.5 million originally hoped for. On-time delivery
was increased, with fewer variances in labour or materials. And the organisational
structure is now the model for the group’s other sites. The ultimate confirmation
of our success was the award - at the Best Factory Awards run by Cranfield School
of Management with the magazine, Works Management - of the accolade, Factory of the
Year 2009.
Dr Marek Szwejczewski, the Director of the awards, said, ‘Thorn Lighting stood
out for its attention to quality, cost and delivery. Its Spennymoor factory is extremely
customer focused and its performance has been so good that it is bringing products
back to the UK from overseas plants.’