When you’re looking to grow but barriers are ever-present, PP C&A get to the root of the problem and unlock your true potential.
Your focus is on growing sales revenue and market share. PP C&A share this focus with you. By working together in a collaborative manner, strategies that deliver measurable success will be developed for you.
A comprehensive outsourcing solution is a strategic enabler to that success and is best considered as a long-term partnership. This partnership between you and PP C&A is built on alleviating constraints to growth by first identifying business pains.
Your particular barriers and pains will be varied but typically revolve around available resource (people, space, cash) or process capability (resulting in extending lead times or increasing costs). PP C&A’s role is to work as partners to help minimise and eliminate such constraints and work together to help you grow revenue and profitability.
An increasing number of OEMs are choosing strategic outsourcing as part of an overall production and supply chain strategy.
Partnering with a strategic outsourcing arm allows you to delegate non-core activities and win back the time you need to focus on your core business competencies. Product innovation, research & development and sales & marketing to name but a few.
The PP C&A facility comprising 5,500m2, utilises lean 6 Sigma manufacturing principles with a high degree of production automation. This award-winning facility allows you to have full confidence in the ability to provide both the capacity and the quality you demand.
PP C&A are perfectly positioned as leaders in strategic outsourcing to some of the world’s largest OEMs to support your production requirements and take ownership of the supply chain.
▫ Optimise costs associated with production and related overheads.
▫ Reduction in total manufacturing costs.
▫ Reduces the financial risk and exposure, especially in markets where demand can change quickly.
▫ Elimination of unnecessary stock and reduction of Work In Progress.
▫ Improves cash flow.
▫ Improves manufacturing lead times.
▫ Access to highly skilled and trained workforce.
▫ Flexible/responsive production to the ‘peaks and troughs’ of demand.
▫ An extension to your own engineering, supply chain and production support capabilities.
▫ Reduces the need for costly sub-contract labour at busy times.
▫ Reduces the likelihood of redundancies during quiet times.
▫ Time to market and scalability.
▫ The faster the machine development, production readiness and commercialisation, the faster that revenue stream can be delivered.
▫ Creates a fixed cost of ownership.
▫ Provides you with price stability.
In today’s competitive global market, lead times are often the critical difference between winning and losing orders. Ask yourself…
▫ Which activities do you currently undertake that generate profit?
▫ Which activities do you currently undertake that drain profit?
Invest in what you do best and delegate non-core processes to organisations that specialise in those areas. This is how you focus on production agility and an efficient machine assembly. Work with partners who can supply at a higher level to reduce your production build times and consequently reduce your sales lead times to your customers.
Number of skilled workers available and training requirements, or an ageing workforce and loss of key tacit knowledge
Lack of space available to build additional machines
Lean exercises have eliminated waste, yet you are still struggling to build machines quicker
Assuming you have correctly identified the areas suitable for outsourcing, the single biggest threat is selecting the wrong partner.
There are considerations you must not ignore and as such, your decision to outsource should be contemplated by giving those considerations the right attention. Those will include…
Can the outsourcing partner do a better job than you can? Do they have the expertise, people, skills and plant/automation to improve the production process, boost quality and help develop designs in the future?
The last thing you want to do is develop a strategic partnership with a company that is financially weak. Do credit checks, look at accounts and ownership.
Consider the complexity and scale of your outsourcing needs, not just for today but for the mid to longer term. Ensure that you would not represent either too large or too small a part of that company’s sales revenue.
For outsourcing to deliver the maximum benefit, then the activities associated with purchasing and supply chain management should be included. The outsourcing partner should have the capabilities and skills to inherit, manage and develop the associated supply chain. If you still must manage parts of it and the associated costs of purchasing/logistics that go with it, then you are not going to see the true benefits.
Look at who they are working with now and which manufacturers and markets they are involved in. You can tell a lot, very quickly, from the quality and standing of existing customers.
Outside of the obvious ISO approvals, do you require any specific approvals relevant to an industry sector or for a given export geography, such as UL/CSA for the US or Canadian markets?
Does the outsourcing partner have the types of engineering skills and innovation to help you develop your products and services? Skills, such as design for manufacture, should be strong and you should expect them to play a big part in improving the product from a technical and commercial perspective.
Asia and Eastern Europe, as well as other low-cost geographies, have held significant appeal for certain outsourcing services, particularly those that are labour intensive such as machining and casting. Again, consider the true cost of the relationship, including lead times, agility, and risk, including the need to retain design IP (a problem often seen in Asia). The current trend in the UK, as well as the USA, has been reshoring of outsourcing activities. Many companies have recognised the escalating costs, political unrest and other risks associated with managing a long-distance supply chain, resulting in identifying partners that are more local to them.
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There should always be a process of consideration when selecting the right outsourcing partner and understanding how that partner delivers against your requirements. That’s why PP C&A introduced the 3D process. It clearly defines the whole journey into three specific stages: Discovery, Decision, Delivery.
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This collection of case studies examines some of the recent strategic outsourcing partnerships delivering against several business pains for machine builders and OEMs. This guide collects case studies published during 2021.
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This guide highlights key technical supplier relationships covering a broad set of categories, from industrial design support and access to academia, and automation and legislation partnerships, to packing and shipping finished goods, all designed to add sought after value to customers.
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A strategic manufacturing outsourcing partnership – built on trust, integrity and maximising each other’s production expertise – is celebrating ten years together with the launch of the world’s most productive EDM drilling machine.
This collection of case studies examines some of the recent strategic outsourcing partnerships delivering against several business pains for machine builders and OEMs, and how those partners are benefiting from the PP C&A approach.
Turning to the strategic manufacturing outsourcing expertise of PP Control & Automation could prove to be a pivotal decision for Needham Group as it aims to turn a £30m expansion blueprint into reality.
Inventor-e is accelerating disruption of inventory management with the help of the Manufacturing Assembly Network, a unique collective of sub-contract manufacturers and a world class engineering design consultancy.
A new manufacturing partnership between PP Control & Automation and Jenton Group has created the capacity to build new UV technology in volumes that could help protect us from Covid-19 in indoor spaces.
As the years have gone by, the relationship between the two businesses has become more interlinked, with PP C&A increasingly being asked to be involved in the design stage of new machine builds.
Watch how Ishida realised their growth potential by making outsourcing part of their manufacturing strategy.
PP Control & Automation has had the opportunity to publish a variety of articles in the UK’s leading journals for the manufacturing industries.
During the design engineering discussions, it quickly became apparent that a more value-added design would be beneficial, allowing for a modular, configurable and pre-wired (Plug & play) style solution with significant benefit.
Inventor-e was established in 2001 as a technology business to provide point-of-use solutions to industrial manufacturers and the facilities management markets.
