Member Article

Astute Express lands submarine deal

Tyneside based precision engineering specialist, Express Group, has secured around £1 million worth of work on one of the UK’s biggest defence projects.

Using new machinery in a specially created clean manufacturing cell on Team Valley, the company is producing critical components for the Royal Navy’s Astute submarines, under construction at Barrow-in-Furness.

Selected by Rolls Royce to join its FastMake initiative – established to improve the performance of the build programme - the Express Engineering team was able to set up the production line in just six weeks and then drive down manufacturing lead times by as much as 80 per cent, whilst delivering components with 100 per cent accuracy.

The seven figure contract will run for the next 12 months but it is hoped that high quality performance will lead to work on the next generation of nuclear submarines – the 20 year Dreadnought project.

Said Gary Thirlwell : “Securing this contract has given us a major boost as we seek to win more work outside the depressed oil and gas sector. It demonstrates the diversity of our team, which has had to adapt extremely quickly to meet new demands.

“What is probably most pleasing is the fact that we have been able to do so whilst providing parts of the highest quality. To date there have been no defects whatsoever and in addition, we have reduced lead times on delivery to about a fifth of what they were before.

“In recent years we have invested over £12 million in our facilities to increase capacity and improve scheduling systems to co-ordinate the activity and logistics of complex full turnkey projects - enabling smooth and seamless deliveries all over the world.”

Matt Anderson, Head of Manufacturing (Submarines) with Rolls Royce, added: “FastMake is an initiative created to speed up the manufacturing process in primary components operations. We have bought factory capacity with Express Engineering where a dedicated cell, involving our own engineers, is working to ensure standards are maintained. This means we can reduce lead times from several weeks to a few days.

“It’s an investment that reduces cost in the long run and ultimately satisfies the customer because there’s no delay to the build programme and components are delivered promptly. The responsiveness of Express Engineering is very good, so everyone is a winner.”

The first of the seven Astute submarines being built became fully operational in 2014.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Paul Dobbie .