From strength to strength

An ethos of excellence is what Tridan Engineering believes has kept it strong over the last few years as it continues to streamline its processes and invest in people and plant, but how exactly has this been achieved? 

Amongst the disruption in the manufacturing industry over the past 18 months, the Clacton-on-Sea subcontractor has steadily expanded its business through a commitment to continuous improvement and value added services. Central to this has been the company's willingness to take on greater responsibility for customer components as companies seek to outsource larger sections of their process chains, meaning that, along with its consistent quality and delivery performance, it has been able to maintain a high level of production throughout the downturn.

When you add to this that the performance required by Prime and first tier customers is constantly rising, Tridan has found that the level of expertise it has needed to achieve to compete in the especially demanding medical and aerospace industries has served it particularly well across all areas of business. As an unwritten rule, the company maintains its workload in a diverse range of industries but in terms of machining precision and quality, the medical sector presents some of the largest challenges.

Built on trust

As an example, Tridan supplies on average 2,000 parts per month to a US customer who produces blood diagnostic and analysis equipment, ranging from desktop to room size machines. The larger and most sophisticated of these fully automated machines can perform a complete battery of tests on up to 100 samples per hour and require a large variety of mechanical parts such as rotators, discs and gears. Tridan is responsible for most of the mechanical elements of the machines, with part sizes varying from 3mm long pins to one-off 3m long bases cast at sister company Stone Foundries.

These components are supplied on a weekly basis straight to the production line, with Tridan taking on full responsibility for quality and inspection. Due to the rapid turnaround required of orders, it also provides a stockholding service for the customer, which has the dual benefit of quick availability as well as ensuring that quality procedures are not rushed to meet demand.

Sales director Michael Lynch explains: “When you take away the machining side of it, the remainder of the process is very demanding. At the real high end we are producing bore sizes that may be down to 2-3µm diameter and some orders demand we have a critical inspection report done for every component which can be anything up to a dozen different dimensions checked on our CMM, with each one labelled and fully traceable – very much along the lines of our aerospace procedures. Working in both these sectors has helped us to promote a culture of quality throughout the company. We have 58 people onsite and as far as we're concerned, that means we have 58 quality inspectors. “We have to be particularly thorough on the aesthetic side of the medical business,” he adds. “There can be no print marks or blemishes and we work to a very high calibre specification. The quality of deburring is also crucial. We have to inspect parts under 4-5x magnification to make absolutely sure there are no rough edges as some parts that go into the manufacture of testing equipment have a very high voltage going through them and any edges or burrs could cause an adverse reaction. Once our inspection has passed them and they're as near to perfect as we can get, they are then washed and sent for any treatments.

“Of those 2,000 parts, there are probably 90 different components and there are a whole range of surface treatments that we have to arrange including alochrome, anodising, passivation and electro-polishing. That goes from plastics all the way through to very tough stainless steels and aluminium castings, both sand and investment.“

Experience is everything

One further aspect of its value added offering is that through its shopfloor expertise, Tridan is often able to save customers money by evaluating the design of their components for manufacture. As Mr Lynch explains: “Something that began in the early days of our medical work and has spread throughout the business is that we can look at elements of designs, such as the radii of corners, hole sizes or undercuts and have our production engineers talk to the designers at the front end. Some designers will now even send drawings to us before they send them to their own purchasing team now so they can be sure it's practical to make parts before the designs are released.”

Managing director Paul Hawkins adds: “On one product, we took out about 25% of the unit price, which was considerable as it was a high end, high usage part. We always promote the fact we offer design for manufacture services and sometimes even if the customer doesn't request it, we can sometimes suggest areas for improvement. It's good practice because we want to retain the work and do the best job possible. If it saves us money in the bargain, it's a win-win scenario.”

Being busy throughout 2009 has also meant that the company has been able to continue to invest, increasing its workforce by 7% and investing £500,000 in new equipment, including a new Mazak CNC turning centre with mill/turn capabilities, which is now being used to machine complex medical components complete in one hit.

Two further machines have also been purchased recently and have been operational since September, namely a Mazak VTC-200C2, which will increase capacity to support its small-to-medium volume markets; and an XYZ 710 vertical machine with integrated fourth axis, to service an increasing one-off and small batch demand with quick turnaround times. At the same time, Tridan also took the opportunity to upgrade its CAD/CAM software to accommodate the wide variety of models coming in from customers.

While the thorough nature of its quality and traceability processes in machining and inspection, and the ability to offer value added services has created opportunities for the business, Mr Hawkins also attributes its performance to the ongoing work performed by its dedicated Lean team as well as the knowledge gained through accreditations in the aerospace arena.

With quality standards closely comparable to those required in the medical sector, he reports that Tridan is now aiming for a bronze SC21 award to take its lean abilities to the next level. The company is also on target for ISO14001 accreditation as Mr Hawkins believes the blue chips will factor this into their procurement requirements within the next few years. With the aim of reaching both these achievements within the next year, regular staff training and ongoing performance analysis, he claims that the company is currently running at 99.8% on time delivery and quality on all orders and areas for improvement are still being identified.

Tridan Engineering
www.tridan.co.uk