Auto Industry gears up for a better future

With its elegant looks and state-of-the-art engineering, the Bentley is a byword for quality, a prestige car lovingly designed and built in the Northwest for the last 60 years.

Bentley is also one of the most famous names in automotive history, with a rich heritage and high standard of craftsmanship that comes with an exclusive price tag to match. Yet production staff at its Crewe factory are working flat out just to meet demand.

In four years Bentley has seen annual sales soar from 1,000 to nearly 9,000, thanks to a family of five new models that include the sleek Continental GT, its larger four-door saloon version, a GT convertible and an upgrade of the top-of-the-range Arnage. Since it bought the company in 1998, VW has invested £500 million on factory infrastructure and developing new models.

This investment, says Christine Gaskill, Member of the Board - Personnel, has paid dividends, allowing the business to grow substantially.

"Bentley is known around the world as a manufacturer of prestige motor cars," she explains. "Its renaissance in recent years has turned its Crewe base into a largely autonomous centre for engineering excellence and fine craftsmanship which is highly regarded within the motor industry."

This emphasis on craftsmanship is epitomised by the fact that there are only two robots on the production line. Little surprise then that since VW acquired the cherished Bentley marque the workforce has swelled by 40%, to nearly 4,000.

However Bentley is far from the only success story in a sector that is worth £9 billion a year to the regional economy.

Leyland Trucks, part of the Paccar Group, are building over 14,000 vehicles a year at one of Europe's most advanced truck assembly facilities, while nearly 130,000 Astra cars and vans are produced annually at Vauxhall's Ellesmere Port facility.

Another important milestone in the region's car industry was reached by Merseyside following the launch of the Freelander 2, which has started rolling off the production line at Ford's Halewood plant, the first time a Land Rover has been produced outside of the West Midlands.

When Ford acquired Jaguar in 2000 they invested over £400 million in Halewood, transforming the production line and introducing new 'lean' manufacturing processes.

Global Benchmark

As a result, over the last three years the plant has received the highest score in a worldwide manufacturing audit of all Ford-owned plants, setting a global benchmark for the company. Now a further multi-million pound investment means the Freelander is being produced alongside the Jaguar X-type, a move that has helped secure the long-term future of the factory and 2,400 jobs.

"Halewood's transformation was one of the most ambitious ever undertaken in the automotive industry," says Thomas Klein, the plant's Operations Director. "Halewood is unique in having two different brands manufactured on the same production line and two vehicles of completely different architecture and no common component - it demonstrates Halewood's commitment to efficiency and flexibility."

The key to all these successes, says Norman Williams, head of the Northwest Regional Development Agency's (NWDA) Automotive Sector Team, has been the willingness of companies to invest in the skills of the workforce and in the concept of lean manufacturing.

"These world-class manufacturers have taken a close look at their processes and implemented some outstanding initiatives around the principles of 'lean'," explains Williams. "It's not the 'dark art' that many companies think - in the main it's just a question of common sense."

The Northwest is the second most important automotive region in the UK, with over 500 companies employing some 43,000 people.

As a result it's become a base for some of the industry's leading suppliers and Williams works closely with partners at the Department of Trade and Industry, the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS), and Business Links, to ensure a co-ordinated programme of assistance for these companies too. This has enabled suppliers to address a range of issues including manufacturing processes, energy costs and inefficiencies in supply chains - all factors that, if left unchallenged, will affect the cost of manufacturing.

The NWDA has further invested in the future of the sector by creating the Northwest Automotive Alliance (NAA), a cluster organisation, which champions engineering excellence and provides a focal point for the region's automotive sector. Its industry-led approach has helped more than a hundred companies improve performance, launch new products, win new orders, and upskill their workforce.

Its Chairman, Stuart Heys, Managing Director of Leyland Trucks says the region has a deeprooted tradition in automotives and is well positioned from an infrastructure point of view.

"But more importantly, the Northwest has the right people to deliver a well co-ordinated and concise programme of assistance for companies with the foresight and the desire to stay ahead of the global game."

It's not just the big multinationals that have overhauled their production processes. Accrington-based Piolax Manufacturing UK, which makes injection moulded components for the automotive industry has seen its productivity rise by 75% on the back of a visit by MAS's industry-savvy practitioners.

The MAS team highlighted high levels of 'wasted' effort and then set to work with the company on developing lean processing techniques which have since been rolled out across the assembly area.

"The actual changes were quite simple and involved creating storage space for parts and improving product flow." says Company Operations Director, Tony Dewhurst, "but the impact has been huge."