Bolton Business Awards winner committed to manufacturing revolution

Pure Fabs manufactures air handling ventilation ductwork from its factory in Horwich, supplying commercial property developers for new build or retrofitted offices, commercial and public buildings.

The company has worked closely with manufacturing advisers at the Business Growth Hub to optimise factory capacity with lean manufacturing processes and instil a ‘total culture change’ which led to a 20% increase in productivity and five new members of staff.

Commenting on the company’s recognition as Manufacturer of the Year at the Bolton Business Awards 2018, Director Pete Connor said:

“The team has worked really hard over the past eighteen months or so to embrace change and adopt our Continuous Improvement philosophy. We’ve been able look at the systems we had in place and process map each area of the business to identify where we could make changes, be it time savings, health and safety improvements, a raw material change, or a combination of all of these factors.

“Our customers’ needs are changing, and we have to be able to react to their requirements, one of which is the implementation of an online ordering platform, the first of its kind in our industry within in Europe.

“Moving to a cloud based shopping cart system means our customers will have direct access to our pricing and production schedule, so they can see in real-time when their job will be ready for collection or delivery and how much that job will cost them. This brings a notoriously archaic part of the manufacturing industry into the realms of Industry 4.0. We must be part of this change, or we will be left behind.

“Pure Fabs is committed to be part of this revolution, and we’re already looking at other areas of the business to implement automation or look towards robotics for the next stage of production improvements.”