Allan Brothers

Source: Construction Digital

Date :23/10/2007 14:23:50

The lean tradition

Managing Director Duncan Forster tells Exec UK how one of Britain’s longest established high performance joinery companies has updated its manufacturing operation

Written by James Hurley & Produced by Ben Weaver

Based in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Allan Brothers is one of Britain’s longest established high performance joinery companies. It has been manufacturing bespoke timber products for the building industry since 1811 and delivers its products and services to customers all over the UK. Now part of the multinational Inwido Group, the company operates from a modern, purpose-built factory alongside the A1.

The company’s products are designed to meet a variety of requirements. Whether executive homes, city apartments, social housing, timber-framed building projects, rural developments or public sector construction, Allan Brothers covers all sectors, from new build, to refurbishment, housing, education, health and welfare, and hotels and leisure complexes.

Increasing capacity

The company was purchased by the Swedish-owned multinational Inwido group in July 2007. Inwido has 29 factories in six countries and employs a total workforce of approximately 3,000. This gives Allan Brothers opportunities to tap into product steams from other factories where there is spare capacity. “We’re looking to grow our sales by bringing in products from elsewhere as well as by growing our own manufacturing capacity in Berwick,” says Managing Director Duncan Forster.

The acquisition came during a period of rapid development at the company as it looks to take advantage of a strong market that has seen demand for Allan Brothers’ products outstrip its supply capacity.

“This year, we’ll have grown by a third compared to when I first joined the business four years ago. We see lots of opportunities to accelerate the growth going forward. The main challenges for us will be to grow our capacity, both in terms of manufacturing and infrastructure, in line with the demands that are placed on the business. We could sell more windows, but we need to grow our capacity. We don’t have any concerns about being able to sell the product,” Forster says.

For decades, Allan Brothers’ strongest market has been in Scotland and the North of England, but it is now increasingly seeing a lot of business being developed in the Midlands and the South of England. “We now supply from the Scottish highlands and islands right down to the South coast and even the channel islands. We have sales people in Scotland, the North of England, in the Midlands and in the South, so the country is well covered.”

Traceability

All of Allan Brothers’ timber has full FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) chain of custody certification, which means the company can trace the timber right back to the forest. The slow-growing redwood timber, perfect for joinery applications, is sourced from Northern Sweden. “We can guarantee that it has come from sustainable, well-managed sources with a workforce and local community that hasn’t been exploited.”

The company’s products are finished with a modern, micro-porous paint system. “This allows moisture vapour to pass through the paint so it can stretch with the timber a little. The water-based paints avoid the cracking and flaking of oil-based paints and provide a high degree of protection for the wood. Our products are fully factory finished when they leave here, with three coats of paint, fully glazed, ready to be installed.”

Forster says that the company has enjoyed growth in all of the sectors it’s in; from new build - encompassing brick and block in England and factory built timber frames in Scotland - to small independent builders’ merchants in various locations, and contractor-lead projects. “Certain contractors have specific specialisms, for example care homes. We supply a lot to them and we’re also very strong in the domestic replacement sector, supplying all of the timber windows for one of the major national domestic replacement companys. That market has taken off like a rocket since we launched a casement window which was suitable for most houses. That shows the level of demand is out there for good quality high performance timber windows.”

Allan Brothers is fortunate enough to enjoy a very balanced business spread across all of its sectors (roughly 20 percent in each) and it’s also well balanced geographically speaking, between Scotland, the Midlands and the South. However, since the market is so buoyant, it has the opportunity to pick and choose between the sectors that it works in. As a result, it is moving away from the social housing refurbishment sector. “The level of demand can be very variable and difficult to predict – whereas in house building, you tend to find if an major builder says they going to build 300 houses that’s exactly what they’ll do,” says Forster.

Challenging tradition

In order to deal with the pressure increased demand has placed on the business, Forster says that the company is in the process of implementing a lean manufacturing programme. This was inspired by the North East Productivity Alliance (NEPA), a regional business improvement initiative that helps manufacturing companies drive down lead times, reduce waste, lower stock and generally improve productivity and competitiveness. “The NEPA programme draws on the experience of the first and second tier suppliers to the motor industry - in particular the likes of Nissan in Sunderland, who are relatively local to us,” Forster explains. “Lean manufacturing expertise was first developed amongst the first and second tier suppliers and NEPA have been looking to disseminate that to other industries.”

While lean is a widespread and well-known modern business philosophy, Forster says that the nature of the timber industry, combined with the fact that Berwick is a small, traditional town, means that the programme is fairly revolutionary for Allan Brothers. “We’ve got this combination of small town and traditional industry that doesn’t always welcome change. Yet there’s been no resistance; because we explain what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, we carry people with us. We try and get as much involvement as possible to get the best development of ideas within the constraints of still having to run a day-to-day manufacturing business.”

The company has had significant training in lean manufacturing tools and techniques, problem solving, analysis of work rates and tact times and has implemented a physical change of the factory layout to allow it to embed new principles of managing the factory. “This should half our lead times. We’re also using consultants who themselves trained within in the motor industry including a former supply chain manager at Rolls Royce, so real blue-chip company experience is being brought to bear. That’s giving us a tremendous advantage in terms of understanding the process, putting more plans and controls in, and understanding the constraints that we have to work with.” And, crucially, it looks as if Allan Brothers will soon have the capacity in place to take advantage of the strong market conditions.