Lincolnshire peelers helped to trim down

Tong Engineering, based in Spilsby and employing some 130 people, has worked with the Manufacturing Advisory Service over the past six months. It has already cut £50,000 from its bottom line - and this figure is set to soar.

The family business, which is now into its fourth generation, manufactures a large range of custom built equipment for food processing, including hoppers, conveyors, washing, weighing and grading machines that clean, polish, trim, sort and handle potatoes and other vegetables. The current MD, Charles Tong, saw that the business was wasting too much money in manufacturing its products and recruited MAS to help it reduce this.

Charles said: "We needed to reduce our costs. This wasn't as easy task as we make all our machines to order, plus we manufacture a wide product range. This means that a completely different product can be going through the factory from one day to the next.

"We were sceptical about working with MAS to start with but they have given us practical, hands-on support and in a language that we can understand! I am delighted with what they have done and we haven't finished the project yet."

The MAS practioner, Malcolm Brown, worked with the factory manager, David Hook, to tackle waste on the shop floor. Malcolm calculated that workers were making 100 visits a day to stores to fetch simple products such as sanding discs and nozzles. He changed this to put these products into cabinets at designated places on the shop floor. This was repeated with everyday components such as nuts and bolts which were put into racks. Malcolm then organised the supplier to fill the racks up, leaving Tong's workers to focus on product assembly.

The project, which is still ongoing, has already saved Tong £50,000 a year and this is set to rise significantly.

Tong are now looking at reducing the time on their painting process through sourcing a one-coat paint and increasing the temperature in their drying room. They are also about to undergo a factory layout review that should bring about significant reductions in product assembly times.

Currently exporting 30% of its products to Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and North America, Tong are looking to increase their overseas business in the next few years.