Ultraframe

Source: Construction Digital

Date :1/4/2008 5:34:25 AM

The sun has been shining through Ultraframe’s roof since its acquisition by Latium Plastic Holdings in 2006 and a rigorous improvement programme including a project known as “Lean Classic”

Written by John O'Hanlon and Produced by Paul Radbourne

Ultraframe may not be the best known name in conservatories and roofing systems, but that’s because its products usually appear under the brand names of the installation companies which advertise so profusely. In fact Ultraframe’s the market leader in roofing systems and a large percentage of the products sold in the UK are made at Ultraframe’s Clitheroe factory, where it employs more than 200 people.

The company’s fortunes have varied in recent years, though. In 1998 it floated on the London Stock Exchange at the height of a boom period during which its turnover doubled, from £41.6 million in 1996 to £81.8 million in 2000. In the 1990s it was truly innovative. the first company to design a true conservatory roof system, as opposed to adapting window frame systems.

It had a virtual monopoly in the market, says Operations Director Mike Price, with over 300 worldwide patents granted or pending. It is also the only conservatory roof manufacturer to have passed the American BOCA system, which is based on severe US weather conditions.

But as profile manufacturers upgraded their roof offerings they managed to cut into Ultraframe’s market share. The company found itself under pressure to preserve its intellectual property rights and expended a lot of energy testing these in court. Cost cutting in the market put on further pressure and by the middle of the present decade Ultraframe was struggling.

In June 2006, from having been valued at £600 million in 2000, it was bought for £29.2 million by the millionaire owner of the Sale Sharks rugby club Brian Kennedy, whose company Latium Plastic Holdings specialises in the windows and conservatories sector.

New business

The turnaround, however, was already under way under a new management team, of which Mike Price was a key member and which was completed in March this year when Grahame Hall took over as CEO. Mike Price already knew the company well, having worked with Ultraframe on a consultancy basis as a director of The Manufacturing Institute.

Now, Ultraframe is back in profit, with a turnover in 2006 of £55 million. In September 2007, Ultraframe won the award for Best Engineering Plant at the Best Factory Awards judged by Cranfield School of Management. At the time of its flotation, many of the staff had been rewarded with a share of the equity.

But over time the value of their shares had been eroded and at the time of the purchase by Latium, morale was low. It was more than just a question of replacing failing manufacturing systems, says Price: faith had to be restored. “Winning the Best Engineering Plant award acknowledges the company’s hard work and forward thinking to create new and more efficient practices. The Operations team has worked hard to streamline our processes and this has been reflected in this award, which is a fantastic boost for all those back at Clitheroe.”

You don’t often see the name Ultraframe on the box. It is a trade supplier and the product reaches its end users through a complex distribution chain involving fabricators, who buy the products in component form and sell it as roof kits to installers. Alternatively the installers may buy complete roof kits direct from Ultraframe or obtain them from builders’ merchants or stockists. There are thus two value streams, components and complete systems. The company’s biggest seller is its Classic Range, for which more than a million orders have been fulfilled.

Process management

The Enterprise Works at Clitheroe, Ultraframe’s headquarters building, contains 90,000 square feet of manufacturing space, and close by are two warehouses, one housing raw materials, the other finished goods and the distribution centre.

Uncut extrusion is brought from the first of these to the factory, where it is fed into one of five machining centres and cut to a Concad data file generated by the sales office. “Every roof is different, though they can vary in complexity,” says Price, adding that there are quite a few design packages used by the trade, such as Roof Wright; however Concad has been configured by the company’s in-house software engineers.

An important aspect of Ultraframe’s regeneration has been its move, over the last twelve months or so, to lean and cellular manufacturing, applied to the most popular roof system, via the Lean Classic project. “We used to have 22 fabricators, each working at their own bench making a product from start to finish,” explains Mike Price. “Now we have separate cells for each part of the roof, fed by designated machining centres and WIP areas. It was a major change as you can appreciate.”

Last year’s programme, called Vision 2006 delivered £2 million in savings. It’s not hard to see how, because the present state analysis at the beginning revealed complex movements of parts and materials between the machining centres, workbenches and packing areas.

Cellular manufacturing cut out most of that: “There are really only two types of roof, simple designs that we can manufacture straight from the CAD/CAM information, put straight into flat packs and ship to the customer confident that it will fit, and more complex ‘pre-erect’ roofs that we build in the factory, then disassemble for dispatch. We are working on the product so that we can get cleverer at design and flat pack more of the roofs first time without pre erecting them, to reduce labour costs.”

The Vision 2006 experience helped staff to realise that they could make a difference to business performance. One of the key changes Mike Price introduced early on was also one of the most radical. Not everybody trusts the idea of working annualised hours, but once people realise that it adds to job security they soon appreciate the benefits of working in a flexible way.

Once the joint consultative committee at Ultraframe had been convinced, after a period of careful negotiation, the result was a great boost to the business, says Mike.

“Ours is a seasonal business. We used to rely on temporary labour in the summer, when people are buying conservatories and we are busiest but there wasn’t enough to support the full workforce in the winter. Through annualised hours we can manage production peaks and troughs with the contracted workforce.”

Maintaining Quality

Quality, predictably, improved too as did the lead time, an important factor in the eyes of the Best Factory Award judges. “On-time in full (OTIF) is now 98.5 percent on a three to five day lead time, and that impressed them,” says Mike with satisfaction.

In its early days, Ultraframe’s innovation kept it in front. Now it faces much more competition. “Competition has created a price war, and with most of our products price cutting is so intense that we are fighting in a ditch,” says Mike. “One important reason for involvement in the Best Factory Awards was to get the benchmarking report, which revealed that despite being the best engineering plant there are three areas in which we are only average. We have an action plan now that will help us address those areas. Over the next twelve months we’re going to be even better then than we are today.”

This will involve rethinking the product line as well as increasing efficiency with the existing lines. “We believe that our technical and R&D resource is one of the best in the industry. We have been investing at a time when most companies that are competing with us have been downsizing their R&D. We’re seeking to focus heavily on innovation and design.”

Without giving too much away, this is likely to involve exploiting the gap in the market between the traditional conservatory, in which people might expect to invest around £20,000 and the full blown home extension costing upward of £40,000.

Meanwhile Ultraframe continues to strengthen its hold on the conservatory market though its stylish Uzone product, which incorporates ‘click lock’ technology that gives virtually tool free installation and is so fitter friendly that even a competent do-it-yourselfer can put it up, according to Mike Price. I might just try it.