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Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer
Published : June 2006

Small changes are no good: you have to make worthwhile changes to stay competitive – as Keith Smith of RGE Engineering told Caroline Merz

It’s not always easy to get publicity for a new product, however special. Mostly it’s the result of hard slog on the part of PR teams and sales staff. To find one of your products being given international exposure free of charge and without any effort on your part must be almost unknown. But this is exactly what happened recently to RGE Engineering, leading specialists in plastic injection moulding for the furniture industry and others.

Much to his amazement, said the company’s operations manager Keith Smith, the Spanish entry (Las Ketchup) in last month’s Eurovision song contest featured an office chair that RGE had designed, manufactured and supplied ready for assembly by IKEA. “We designed and made all the components for that chair, apart from the gas lift. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the Spanish group dancing round it!”

The chair is just one of the many items designed, engineered and manufactured by RGE, whose corporate headquarters are in Godmanchester, near Cambridge. Set up in 1965 initially as a tool making business, RGE takes its name from the initials of founder Ernie (Leach), and his two sons Gordon and Rodney. They soon added injection moulding to the manufacturing of tools, and over the last 40 years the company has grown and developed into the large and successful multinational that is today’s RGE Group, with three manufacturing facilities in the UK, and others in the US, Portugal and China it is still solely owned by Gordon Leach MD. There are some 400 employees working across the three UK sites, more than two thirds at Godmanchester.

As is so often the case, continued growth and competitiveness is the result of a willingness to embrace change. “Over the last four years we have taken a holistic approach to our supply chain and to adapting to customers’ needs,” explained Smith. Injection moulding is a one-shot engineering process: a moulded component can be made in a single operation. Because of this the marketplace is very competitive, and the injection moulding industry has come under strong pressure, particularly from eastern Europe and China. “We have to be adaptable to compete,” said Smith. “For example, if the customer wants to reduce the supply chain we will work out a way of adapting to meet this need.”

An outstanding example is RGE’s facility at Yate, near Bristol, where on-site manufacturing is dedicated to serving a major client, Indesit, with ‘through-the-wall’ just-in-time (JIT) flexible supply directly to six assembly lines within the main assembly hall of the tumble dryer factory. RGE’s expertise in production planning, quick-change tools and continuous high volume plastic supply enables the factory to produce components for more than a million parts per year. Production started two years ago, and today there are 16 machines at Yate ranging in size from 500 to 1000 tonnes, including six-axis robot manipulation and vibration welding processes. “This is all about lean, about reducing cycle times and storage. This facility is probably unique in injection moulding in the UK, and there are very few others like it in Europe,” commented Smith. “Over the last two years the business has grown by around 20 per cent, and the Yate facility has made a significant contribution to this growth.” Other major customers include AEP, Senator, Pledge, Schneider and Honeywell.

In-house design is a vital part of the complete package RGE provides to its customers. There are five people working continuously on design at the Godmanchester site, using Solid Works and Solid Edge software. In terms of product design, the company offers two distinct areas. The first is its own plastic components for the furniture industry: RGE is the largest supplier of plastic furniture in the UK, producing 65 per cent of all office chairs with a plastic base. The design team is constantly working on new products. Recent examples of innovative design include a universal structural seat with an adaptive control, and a ‘Y-arm’ chair incorporating a gas lift on the arm rests, controlled by a button.

The second design area, continued Smith, is for “people who walk through the door with a sketch or an idea. For example, a company called Bathe Buddy had an idea for a poolside umbrella with a moulded plastic base that would provide lockable secure storage for valuables while the owner was in the water. They came to us, and we designed the product. It’s all part of our focus on adapting to customer needs.” This product was made at the Whittlesey facility, but another unique new product – a toolbox for which RGE designed the product and the tooling, and then manufactured both, was designed at the company’s Portuguese facility, manufactured in China – and then shipped to RGE’s US plant for the American market.

One advantage of RGE having its own facility in China is the ability to cut both lead times and costs, and thus secure a marketplace for its products, said Smith. “You would normally get prototypes on SLS or SLA. But because both these new products were structurally important, we had them made in China from solid materials. We procured them in the same lead time and for the same cost as laser prototypes, but these are structurally stronger – and the customer prefers them.” Over the last year, the company has also started supplying components in a joint venture with an eastern European supplier. “We don’t want to kill our own marketplace, but if a customer wants a component and it looks effective from the cost point of view, we’ll do it,” he added. In fact the company is currently looking into buying its own factory in eastern Europe in order to supply cost competitive products to one of its major customers.

“The main issue for us in working with lean is that the essence of survival in manufacturing industry is that you have to make sea changes. Small changes won’t get you there. There’s no other way of us growing in this business,” concluded Smith.