Kitchen Firm Gets Food for Thought
From Flagship Airline Jumbo jet overhaul teams were the unlikely source of inspiration for a leading Welsh kitchen manufacturer and retailer seeking to take its performance to a higher altitude. Ambitious Sigma 3 Kitchens, which is currently growing its business across the South East of England as well as Wales, turned to British Airways Maintenance Cardiff (BAMC) as part of a drive to achieve continuous improvement in product and service quality. The Llantrisant-based manufacturer decided that, despite the massive difference in their products, their managers could learn most from aircraft technical teams, whose work is critical for the safety of millions of passengers. Afterwards Wayne Lewis, Sigma 3’s commercial contracts manager was in no doubt that the visit to BAMC was well worthwhile. Sigma 3, which has four showrooms across South Wales, was among the latest Welsh enterprises to benefit from Inside Welsh Industry, which enables high performing businesses to share valuable information on good management practices with fellow Welsh businesses. Wayne Lewis said; “BAMC is a very impressive operation and visiting them has been hugely beneficial for our business. As a direct result we have now put in place new and very effective systems for our commercial kitchen design and installation process. Making kitchens and maintaining aircraft might not seem to have a lot in common but we took away a wealth of valuable information and advice.” Wayne and his management colleagues studied how the highly qualified BAMC teams carried out their maintenance work on Boeing 747s and 777s. The aircraft industry is a highly complex and competitive environment where even the smallest error can have disastrous consequences. With safety as a number one priority, to achieve fault-free engineering BAMC has developed a simple but effective ‘task card’ system to ensure the highest standards of quality and safety are maintained during every step of an aircraft’s overhaul. As an aircraft arrives at BAMC for anything up to 30 days of maintenance the task cards are printed and physically racked in the order they are to be carried out. The contents of each task card, numbering up to 10,000 for some aircraft, are also logged onto a computer programme. During the life of each task card it can move through a number of simple go no- go checking points until the task is completed. Each task card must complete each checking point and be accounted for before the aircraft can be released for flight. There are three colour task cards operating similar to a traffic light system: white; amber; and red. White indicates that a job has been completed and is on course to meet a deadline; amber denotes that there is a job pending, which, if not resolved, will cause a hold-up; and red signifies that work is about to come to an imminent halt. Wayne explained that adopting this system has given a big boost to Sigma 3’s staff in making, selling and installing kitchens for both individual private customers and big house-builders such as Barratt and Bellway.
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