AI Materials
8 employees, based in Sheffield
Mark Burton,
Managing Director
“An MD of a small business can often feel that he has nowhere to turn for really reliable help and advice with problems that he just does not have the time to sort out himself.
MAS provides people with the skills and experience to step in at a practical level and make a difference straight away.” “Working with Mike Andrews and the team at MAS has been a real boost to our Company. “ Company Profile
Founded in 1993, AI Materials supplies titanium, nickel alloy and stainless bar,
sheet, tube and forgings to a wide variety of markets, including Oil and Gas, Industrial Fasteners and specialist Engineering industries. About 25% of its
business is exported mainly to Europe, with some to Asia and South America.
The Company had initially built a good reputation, but in early 2000 it had
started to lose its way. In September 2003, Mark Burton and a local entrepreneur, John Robinson bought the company. Mark is now the major shareholder. Mark and John set out to restore AI Materials ’ reputation for
quality and customer responsiveness. Whilst they achieved much success, by
mid 2005 delivery performance was still below one of the company ’ s ISO 9001:2000 objectives: to achieve 90% on time delivery. It was at this point that AI Materials Ltd contacted the Manufacturing Advisory Service (Yorkshire & Humber) ‘MAS’. Working with Manufacturing Expert, Mike Andrews of MCCR & Associates (a MAS Associate), AI Materials undertook a 15 day manufacturing improvement project which focused on addressing the delivery performance issue.
Key Achievements
As a result of the 15 day manufacturing improvement project, the company
achieved the following improvements: ?

• 12% improvement in delivery performance over the five months of the project;
• 35% improvement in baseline value added; and ? Increase in stock turns from 4.9 times per year to 7.9 times per year – a 62% improvement.

AI Materials is now undertaking a strategic manufacturing improvement project with MAS to further improve supply chain relations and develop stock holding processes which will enable them to effectively handle the transition to holding more stock in house. Making it Happen
The project began by establishing delivery performance baselines so that actual performance could be captured and analysed. The result of this showed that only 40% of orders were meeting the agreed delivery deadlines – quite a way off the company ’s ISO 9001:2000 objective of 90%.
With this information in hand, MAS Manufacturing Specialist Mike Andrews began to dig deeper into the deliverie which failed to meet their deadlines to
try to identify common causes. Mike checked the Company ’s current processes and systems and quickly identified issues that were affecting the
Companies ability to meet customer expectations. Mike then analysed the different types of orders which the company handled. He identified that stock orders were reliably good, mainly because the whole sales supply process was under the control of the Company. However on orders where the company operated in a supply chain (receiving stock and goods from sub-contractors before dispatching to the customer), the ability to meet delivery targets was
very poor. The results of the orders analysis was presented to the company’ s management team and an action plan agreed which would fundamentally change the way AI Materials looked at their supply chain. The Company agreed that they would: Increase stock orders thereby reducing the reliance on sub-contractors; work with existing suppliers to improve their reliability and negotiate higher priority for AI Materials orders; and source new suppliers who can better meet AI Material’s requirements, including the sourcing of suppliers who can produce smaller sizes of ingot. What AI Materials people
said: “I have seen a big improvement in output and orders since the project
started.” John Rhodes, Inspector “It ’s brilliant. We are not perfect yet
but there has been a big improvement in the customer ’s view of us.”
Muriel Slater, Sales “The biggest advantage to me has been the time it has given me to find other ways of producing and other routes.”
Highlights of Achievements

• 12% improvement in delivery performance over the five months of
  the project;
• 35% improvement in baseline value added; and Increase in stock turns from 4.9 times per year to 7.9 times per
  year – a 62% improvement.