Machining and sourcing – now from 3 worldwide locations

Published: 11 March 2008  04:14 PM
Source: The Engineer Online

If you are looking for a successful UK company with precision engineering and machining expertise who also has the facility to globally source material and components for you, why not visit Components Worldwide / Mini Gears on stand F4 at Subcon?

Mini Gears Ltd is a subcontract engineering company that has won many awards for innovation and machining excellence.  The company works with its customers providing assistance with design where it can see improvements can be made in performance and costs.  Over the last few years the company has transformed itself from being a specialist gear manufacturer only to a company now offering a full range of machining capacity at its 35,000sq. ft factory in the UK, plus an extended product range including machined parts, gears, castings, forgings, stampings and fabrications through its global sourcing division Components Worldwide Ltd. 

This forward thinking company has competed on a global scale and its ability to source and manufacture such a wide range of parts has resulted in its turnover increasing from £5 million in 2004 to £9 million in 2008.

To keep its customers’ products competitive the company has invested in the latest 5 axis CNC machines, restructured its UK factory and purchased a new 12,000 sq.ft. factory in the Czech Republic:

‘In the last four years material prices have increased by 90%.’ says Peter Durkin, Technical Director.  ‘To keep our customers’ products competitive and to avoid losing their business to overseas competition we had to reduce our costs to avoid passing on all these increases.  Therefore we had to look at the cost of raw materials and components in conjunction with our manufacturing costs.

‘At our UK factory we have seen a 110% increase in the number of components produced over these last four years. This has been achieved by restructuring the shop floor.  High volume CNC machines have been adapted into more medium volume producers by massively reducing set up times and introducing more flexible tooling.  We have moved over 100 machines around the shop floor so that their new locations gave the best productivity.  Eleven of our older machines were taken out of production as their Overall Equipment Effectiveness had dropped to only 25% and the cost of maintaining them was too high.  A massive investment was made in new machinery and we purchased two Mazak Intergrex 300-IV 5 axis machine tools which has greatly reduced set up times and work in progress downtime as the parts are manufactured in a one hit operation, thus reducing our manufacturing costs.  This latest technology will also enable us to compete in more specialist markets where high accuracy between multiple operations is critical.’

‘Through our global sourcing division, Components Worldwide, we source from China, where we have our own sourcing facility, employing English speaking engineers with years of experience in sourcing parts for western companies.  We have also starting sourcing from India and Eastern Europe. 

Last year it purchased a machining factory in Sumperk in the Czech Republic giving  an excellent base for expanding into Europe and extending its machining capacity.  Sourcing raw materials from low cost economies means that the parts can then, where necessary, be finish machined on the latest CNC machinery in one of the companny’s own factories.  This combination of supply gives the most economic price and enables customers to retain their market competitiveness.

Components Worldwide / Mini Gears, a featured supplier at the show, will have a team of Technical Sales Engineers at Subcon on stand F4, where on display will be a range of gears, machined parts, racks, castings, forgings, stampings and fabrications. 

Subcon 2008

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