Verbatim transcript of presentation by Dr. Mike Ashton, Chief ...

Copyright Cti 2006
Verbatim transcript of presentation by Dr. Mike Ashton, Chief Executive
at a Briefing Event on the Advanced Manufacturing Park held at Cti on
19 th May 2006
“ The UK casting sector provides a strategic service to a broad range of companies,
manufacturing a wide variety of products for oil field, transport, mining, petrochemical,
medical devices, naval systems, defence, civil engineering, power generation and so on.
Indigenous casting capacity is necessary to meet the requirements of short lead-time
manufacture, which is now prevalent in most sectors. Proximity of supply is also of vital
importance to support new product development, where speed to market is increasingly the
determinant of success. The current scale of this fast, customised casting production in the
UK should not be underestimated; 30,000 people generate sales of £2bn a year that underpin
a substantial proportion of manufacturing GDP.
Although tremendous progress has been made, the customer base needs the UK casting
sector to adapt to service their requirements faster and better than ever before, and to
diversify into materials that will achieve a step change in the performance of their products.
To support the sector as it adjusts to the new world order, we too needed to adapt and to
diversify. Although we were operating quite successfully on our Sheffield site, which had
been developed substantially over the years to accommodate capital-intensive R&D, it was
clear that we would need additional space to accomplish our objectives. New premises were
a critical element in a 5-year plan that had three targets:
Firstly, to develop the technologies and technical capacity to meet identified
market needs
Secondly, to bring about a skill and culture change in the organisation
And thirdly, to create a high profile, one-stop-shop service which would
attract OEMs of advanced technology goods, the aerospace primes and the
major defence manufacturers, and their first tier suppliers
It has taken a huge R&D effort to
develop market-tested technologies
in product design, rapid
prototyping and fast manufacturing
and high performance special
metals. None of this world class
technical capacity would be in
place were it not for support from
the Dti, Objective 1 and Yorkshire
Forward – notably, through the
Advanced Metals Technology
Initiative or AMTI programme and
Objective 1’s High Technology
Materials programme. This
support has been a blessing, and
the R&D outputs have transformed
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Cti, for we are no longer an organisation that solely feeds off companies in the sector we
serve; we now derive significant revenues from business development activity in the wider
market which is intended to feed them – and others - in the casting supply chain.
The extensive application of the R&D outputs to actual products has also resulted in the
development of relevant skills in the 55 people now working on this site. They are imbued
with the culture necessary to achieve the planned expansion in activity, and understand fully
that lean and agile operations provide the affordability and responsiveness necessary to
compete in the real world.
At this point, exactly three years into our five-year plan, we are meeting our ‘stretch’ revenue
targets and are well ahead in profitability. The keys to this building were handed over to us
only a few weeks ago, and now we’ve actually arrived, we have the space and facilities to
maintain this growth.
We are confident that we can do so because
we know that the integration of technology
and skills in accredited facilities to create a
unique, single-source capability is the key to
success – in just the same way as it is the key
to the success of the Park. A practical
capability, readily accessible to industry, to
provide competitive design, material and
manufacturing solutions not only satisfies a
commercial need and reduces risk, but also
demonstrates technology in the most
compelling way. This stimulates its
exploitation and adoption, and the more
effective we can be in this respect, the greater the return will be to all those who have
invested in this initiative. Not least, this includes the casting sector, and I believe that our
presence on the Park will enhance awareness of the capabilities of the industry and its
products, as well as raising its technology and skills platform.
We have several initiatives already in play
that will provide creative and substantive
solutions to market needs. For example, to
fill a market gap and to exploit almost £2m
investment in advanced vacuum melting
technology, we have set up the first company
in the UK capable of manufacturing titanium
castings. Its prime purpose is to develop
and supply strategic components especially
where retention of intellectual property is
important. Titanium has a high strength to
weight ratio, a property that renders it very
attractive to the aerospace and defence
sectors in particular. However, it is an extremely reactive metal in the molten state and it
has taken us more than three years to develop the know-how to produce titanium castings to
‘air worthiness’ standards. In that period, we have also made considerable headway in
establishing credibility in these sectors, where it is notoriously difficult to become an
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accredited supplier. We have, therefore, overcome the formidable barriers to entry that
hitherto have prevented the creation of a commercial UK capability. And this is a serious
undertaking; Titanium Castings (UK) Ltd has at its disposal melting capacity capable of
producing up to £25m worth of titanium components a year. As this fledgling company
grows, it will bring additional business to the regional subcontractors with whom we have
worked so closely over the past few years, such as C.W. Fletcher, a South Yorkshire company
that excels at machining titanium aerospace components.
An example of the creation and capture of
new business, and how this promotes and
finances the adoption of new technology, is
provided by the M777 light weight Howitzer,
developed by BAE Systems for the US Army
and Marine Corps. A key attribute of this
gun is that it is light enough to be towed,
using running gear designed by Horstman
Defence Systems in Bath. A critical
component of the running gear is a thin-wall,
cast steel arm. This has to endure the impact
and stresses encountered on rough terrain,
because its failure would render the gun
immobile. Cti worked closely with Horstman on the design, material and manufacturing
technique for the arm. Its success in performance trials resulted in Horstman winning the
multi-million pound supply contract for the running gear. To reduce risk to the programme,
BAE Systems insisted that Cti satisfy the low rate initial production requirements, while the
material and manufacturing know-how was transferred to Furniss and White, a South
Yorkshire company. Furniss and White are now engaged in the seven year, full rate
production programme for the US Army, but the way sales of the gun to other nations are
going, production is likely to continue for many years thereafter.
We are building on the outstanding performance
of this cast material with another design
authority, Timoney Technology Ltd, in Co.
Meath, Ireland. We helped them to develop the
suspension systems for Crusher, the world’s first
large-scale Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle.
Testing by the National Robotics Engineering
Centre of Carnegie Mellon University, the prime
contractor to the US Department of Defence,
demonstrated the outstanding performance of
the highly stressed suspension components made
by Cti. We have set up an entire supply chain,
including casting manufacture, machining, heat-treatment, surface treatment and so on, as
part of the strategy to secure what will be very substantial, long term business for the UK,
and South Yorkshire in particular. The key point is that the opportunity to secure this
business would not have been available had it not been for the role we are now able to play.
In the displays we have arranged for your site tour later, you will see numerous examples of
our success in creating, capturing and safeguarding high value added business in a broad
range of sectors.
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And our ability to do so will be
markedly enhanced when we take
delivery in 9 months time of a largescale,
500kg capacity vacuum-melting
unit. At the beginning of this week I
was in Germany finalising its
specification with one of only three
manufacturers in the world capable of
producing this advanced technology
equipment to the required standard. It
will enable us to put into proper effect
a novel approach to the manufacture of
large, near net shape castings in high
performance alloys of nickel, cobalt
and steel. We are confident that this new approach will reduce procurement costs and
improve product integrity and performance in the target aerospace, defence and oil and gas
sectors. This £1.2m investment, supported by Objective 1 and Yorkshire Forward,
complements the substantial regional strengths in special metals, it demonstrates further our
commitment to enhancing the status of the Park and ensures that our facilities and
capabilities remain unique, world-class, relevant to the marketplace and accessible to
industry.”
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