Welcome to the March edition of Bennett Engineering’s newsletter which we snazzily call the ‘Engineering Echo’.
Spending Wisely
Budgets, cash, dosh, Capex, expenditure plans…
It’s all well and good making grand plans when you are absolutely fed up of the reactive maintenance on a machine that you a nurturing through every shift if there’s budget constraints.
Wanting to increase throughput and ramping things up might be the management mantra but again if there’s not enough cash to make the right investments well it’s going to be tough.
One of the things that Bennett Engineering absolutely prides themselves on is providing you with the absolute best solution for what you actually need at the best cost we can achieve for you. We’ve been doing just that for over 25 years.
Now we can’t magic up the cash to help you spend it with us but we can assure you of two things:
- We’ll aim to provide the best solution at the best value we can
- We’ll provide you with enough information to produce a Capex that makes sense to your board
Over the years we’ve helped manufacturers avoid a £30million investment through a programme of machine modernisation, helped an OEM reduce their material usage, assembly and installation time significantly and an innovative new machine builder to revamp their prototype to be a commercial machine ready to sell at a profit. That’s without talking about the costs we’ve saved by providing a range of safety designs and analyses.
If you’d like to talk to us about spending some budget please don’t hesitate in getting in touch:
☎️ 01332 419220
📩 info@beneng.co.uk
East Midlands manufacturing outlook
A couple of weeks ago Bennett Engineering exhibited (with our manufacturing partners) at the East Midlands Chamber Manufacturing and Trade Conference at Loughborough University.
Here’s 5 things that we picked up on the day that made us smile:
- The East Midlands has a strong industrial heritage and all of the authorities, universities and other bodies are looking to put their weight behind us getting stronger as a manufacturing sector
- Yes we fell out of the top 10 list of manufacturing nations BUT our output did not drop
- Work is progressing at pace for the Industrial Strategy and many manufacturers have been involved in the consultation to identify the key 9 areas to focus on to strengthen the sector
- As a resilient sector most of us are looking to grow by launching new products, increasing BD investment and adopting tech / digitalisation.
- 63% of manufacturers, from the MAKE UK survey, are more optimistic than ever for this year
It was an interesting event to attend, we spoke to a range of people and made some fantastic new connections on the day as well as hearing the all important outlook information from reliable data sources.
Bennett Engineering and JB Engineering at the East Midlands Chamber event
Coffee cups matter
Are you a coffee drinker?
We are. Seleena is a strong black coffee drinker (and ideally not instant powder!) and Craig is a white coffee only in the morning drinker.
Did you know that the material your cup is made of matters?
With a small wide cup it will spread the aroma which can enhance the sweetness of your coffee. Whereas a tall thin mug directs the coffee to the back of your tongue making it taste more bitter.
A thick rimmed mug holds the heat for longer making your coffee feel rich and smooth. Whereas a thin rimmed cup lets the coffee flow faster so the flavour tastes lighter.
Then what the cup is made of makes a difference to for example ceramic mugs hold the heat and give a ‘purer’ coffee flavour. Whereas glass cups cool really quickly but give you a visual ‘taste’ of your coffee by seeing the colour.
Us. Well we just pop ours in our trusty Bennett Engineering mugs and slurp away all morning!
PS Anyone is welcome to come for a coffee, just drop us a message or give us a call and we’ll arrange a time
Coffee at Bennett Engineering
The soft hammer
We’ve got a large project in manufacture currently and it will be assembled at Unit 5.
Upon checking the tool box we realised we were minus a soft hammer. Craig jumped onto one of his favourite tool manufacturers and got ordering.
Did you know that when the ‘knocker uppers’ were plying their trade they found it was more lucrative to use a softer object to wake up their client?
Whilst most used a long stick to gently tap on bedroom windows to wake people up so they could get to work on time others modified their tool. Like Mrs Bowers of County Durham who, with her dog Jack, used to wake the miners up every day. It’s thought her hammer type of knocker upper was made of bamboo to give a softer knock on the door of the miners.
So whilst we won’t be using our soft hammer to wake anyone up selecting the right tool for the job is critical.
We’re just glad it’s not made of ‘softer stone’ as they were in the really old days (apparently sandstone was a good soft hammer!).
Image source: Google
And that wraps up the March Engineering Echo, stay tuned for the April Engineering Echo which will be sent out after Easter