Wise heads on young shoulders

West Midlands based J8 Precision keeps engineering in the family.

To both casual observer and battle hardened entrepreneur alike, starting an engineering business during the worst recession since records began would at best be conceived as a risky undertaking. But for a West Midlands-based brother and sister partnership, following in their father's footsteps seemed a logical thing to do. Dave Tudor headed off to Minworth, Sutton Coldfield to meet the driving forces behind J8 Precision. In my role as editor of Solutions, I meet managing directors, business owners and engineers on a regular basis. But what initially struck me about Kate and Jack Edwards were their respective ages. At 32 and 24 respectively, they hardly fit the stereotypical engineering subcontracting company profile, so how did the company come about? As Kate Edwards explains, engineering has been in the Edwards' family blood for over 30 years. “Our father, Ray Edwards started his own engineering company, Edwards Precision Engineering over 30 years ago,” she explains. “It was very successful but relied heavily on business from the automotive industry which had been on the decline for some years. In June 2009, Dad made the decision to close the company. Business was hardly booming and he was approaching retirement age so it seemed a logical thing to do.” Sowing seeds In the latter years of Edwards Precision Engineering, both Kate and Jack had become involved with their father's business. Jack spent a couple of valuable years working on the shop floor before embarking on a mechanical engineering degree at university and Kate, with a degree in Business Management already under her belt, introduced structured sales and marketing strategies to Edwards Engineering for the first time. When father Ray decided to run down the business, the seeds were already sown for the formation of another company. “Jack and I simply couldn't walk away,” Kate reveals. “Engineering was in our blood but while we wanted to build on the sound foundations that Dad had established, we wanted to do things differently. With both Mum and Dad's blessing after some pretty intense initial discussions, Jack and I set-up J8 Precision in October 2009. I think they could see that we were serious and totally committed to this so they helped fund the project. My real inspiration is the fact that our success is Mum and Dad's pension. You can't get a better motivator that that!” Whilst J8 Precision is still in its infancy as a company, its seven strong workforce is anything but inexperienced. J8 inherited five skilled operators, including three toolmakers from Edwards Engineering and with Mr Edwards Senior around to offer a helping hand and advice, there's a talented pool of resources for Kate and Jack to draw on if necessary. Natural evolution Whilst aware of their obvious links to Edwards Engineering, both Kate and Jack are keen and determined to carve out an independent identity for J8. Their vision is to evolve into a company that not only offers a wide range of precision subcontracting services such as CNC machining, CAD/CAM, grinding and toolmaking, but also provides a number of ancillary and complementary elements such as design and assembly. “Although it's early days for the company, we've got a pretty good idea of where we want to be,” Jack adds. “We want to be seen not only as manufacturers but also as engineering consultants and solution providers – getting involved with projects right at the front end from design and concept through to packaging and despatch. We are a young company but our size and flexibility means we can turn work around quickly without comprising on quality or integrity. Our customers really appreciate the fact that we can often get them out of sticky situations in terms of meeting tight deadlines and delivery dates.” Priorities and objectives Sensibly, Kate and Jack are taking things slowly, letting the company build up momentum naturally rather than forcing the issue. In terms of machining capability, J8 is already pretty well equipped with a number of lathes, milling machines and grinders from Mazak, Bridgeport, Chiron, XYZ and Jones and Shipman adorning the shopfloor. J8 specialises in prototypes and small-to-medium batch quantities and can offer multi-axis machining from solid models in a wide range of materials, spark and wire EDM, reverse engineering, hot and cold form tooling, production tooling – including refurbishment, and the design and manufacture of gauges, jigs, fixtures and special purpose machines. “The temptation was to approach the banks and try to borrow large sums of money at start-up,” Kate recalls, “but that's not how we want to do things. Most of our machines were inherited from Edwards and at the moment we're focused entirely on building up our client base. Work is coming in from a diverse spread of industries such as rail, FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods), medical and automotive and we do have ambitious investment plans for the company and a structured programme of implementation but we're not going to run before we can walk. For the time being, we'll focus on our core skills of sound engineering principles, quality and flexibility and build on those foundations.” Kate continues: “One of the things I am particularly passionate about however is the retention and development of engineering skills which is why we hope to take on some apprentices in the near future. It would be an absolute tragedy if the UK lost its engineering heritage and apprenticeships are therefore of vital importance.” Quality first, quality foremost Like Edwards Engineering before it, J8 Precision puts quality of work at the top of its priority list. Its quality control and inspection department is extensive and the company is already starting to develop a reputation for accuracy and precision. Underpinning this ethic is the company's quality system which will be audited by BSI at the end of April against the requirements of ISO9001: 2008. “Quality is so integral to the running of the business that we see ISO9001 registration as essential in today's marketplace,” Kate declares. “In essence the Standard reflects the way we do business anyway, so hopefully we'll pass the audit with no problems. One of the benefits of starting a company from scratch is that we were able to start with a blank canvass and quality has always been high on the agenda.” Wake up call Being a relatively young, forward thinking company, you would think that J8 would qualify for financial help from government and local authorities, but according to Kate Edwards this simply hasn't been the case. The Government really does need to wake up to the idea that manufacturing can play a significant role in generating much needed revenue for the economy and offer help and assistance in the early years. Based on her own experiences, Kate is both sceptical and critical. “We've been knocked back so many times because of our circumstances,” she says. “With Edwards, we were considered too ‘cash rich' to qualify for any business funding and with J8 we're considered too ‘new'. We recently applied for some financial assistance from MAS to assist us in undertaking automotive project work. We were in a strong position to win business but the funding was refused because we hadn't been in business long enough. It seems that everything we apply for is shrouded in red tape and mountains of paperwork and about the only thing we've qualified for recently is help with our ISO9001 registration approval. Help with outgoings such as business rates would be a great help but it all falls on deaf ears.” With Kate and Jack the expression ‘wise heads on young shoulders' springs to mind. It is commendable that despite intensely difficult operating conditions, J8 was born and is starting to make its mark. There's a real steely determination to make a success of the company but as Kate concludes, there are more fundamental issues to consider as well. “I'm really concerned about the lack of young people involved in engineering,” she confides. “I've been around engineering all my life and I'm genuinely worried by the fact that all the expertise, experience and knowledge we've amassed over decades of innovation will be gone forever if we don't promote engineering and highlight what a great career it can be. Jack and I are totally driven by this.” Like I said, wise heads on young shoulders!

J8 Precision
www.j8precision.co.uk



 

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