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EEF Manufacturing Champion – January – Accuturn

Accuturn have become members of national Engineering Association, EEF.

Director, Nicola Stokes said “Following the recent rebrand we are keen to get more involved in the engineering industry nationally, share industry knowledge and raise the profile of our business. We look forward to getting more involved throughout 2019.”

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Accuturn gains ISO9001 and ISO14001 accreditations

Accuturn have gained ISO 9001:2015 Quality and ISO 14001:2015 Environmental accreditations.

ISO 9001:2015 sets out the criteria for a quality management system and is based on a number of key principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of top management, the process approach and continual improvement.

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One Piece Flow vs. Batch Work- Getting Our Heads Around Which Is Better!

The issue of whether one piece flow or batch work is best has been an issue much debated here at Stokes & Rowe!  When we first set up our assembly department we instinctively started assembling our products using batch work.  It made sense to us and seemed like the obvious way to do things.  And funnily enough, every new member of staff who has started has automatically veered towards doing batch work too!  The reasoning was that we’d be more efficient completing all of one process before moving onto the next.   For example, putting all the o rings in all the filter housings, then moving onto all the collets, then putting in all the springs… you get my drift.  And we did this for quite a while.  But then we started seeing it’s flaws…

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Setting up a Red Tag System

As a company manufacturing a wide range of components, we have lots of different types of tooling in our factory.  But we don’t want unnecessary tooling crowding our work space as this just leads to waste.  The same goes for the components we make.  Like all companies, we occasionally get parts that are not quite right and are rejected during our quality control processes.  A lot of these can be reworked so we don’t want to throw them away.  But how do we manage this so that we don’t have rejected parts piling up over time and tooling that ‘might get used for something in the future’ taking over?  That is where setting up a red tag system will help.

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Setting up a Lean ordering system

Something that has always been a bit of a pain for us is ordering material.  The responsibility for looking at the technical drawings and working out what was required has always fallen solely on Rob’s shoulders.  But this  just added to his already-bursting-at-the-seams workload!  We knew there had to be an easier way to work out our material requirements based on our orders.  And it also had to be done in a way that anyone could take charge of it, not just Rob.  But we also didn’t want to have to start spending out on computer software.  So we set out to come up with a really simple, free, Lean ordering system.

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Process Improvements in the Machine Shop

With all the Lean improvements to the factory we’ve been making so far, it has left us in a great position to start having a look at our every day jobs and processes.  We can make improvements by recognising and then eliminating any waste within every job we do.  Process improvements can allow us to

  1. make jobs easier and more enjoyable for staff
  2. increase our efficiency

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