Engaging in SiG has helped the company set a vision and strategy for the future. It also enabled JJ Churchill to weather the turbulence in the oil and gas sector and, at the same time, reshape the business with a greater focus on the aerospace market.
Andrew Churchill, managing director of JJ Churchill, explained: “Working with SiG we were able to identify the structural and process weaknesses in the business and to put a plan in place to address these. And this wasn’t just at a strategic level. The SiG team supported our teams to implement structured problem solving.”
One of these was a metrology issue, where recordings from JJ Churchill’s CMMs did not match the results from the customer’s CMM. This posed a real problem as parts inspected by JJ Churchill with accompanying metrology documentation did not match that of the customer, leading to parts being rejected.
As part of the SiG programme, measurement experts the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) worked alongside SiG and JJ Churchill’s engineers to develop capability.
JJ Churchill’s quality manager Paul Oldfield said: “All our CMM readings showed an exact match with the drawings the customer provided, but these were not replicated when the customer checked. Our CMM and the customers were telling two different stories.
“The problem was fundamentally with the two different sets of algorithms used by the two different CMM brands: measuring an aerofoil surface is not straightforward.
“When we showed this to the customer, we were able to explain the reason for the variations and to re-establish our quality credentials. We learnt a valuable lesson in the use of metrology. We also, with SiG’s support, spread quality skills around the company, for example with Gauge R&R and FMEA (Failure Mode & Effects Analysis) training.”
As part of the SiG programme, continuous improvement engineer Pete Manton led an NVQ initiative to enhance skills, which gave the two teams of eight complete autonomy in solving three production problems. At the same time, it generated a potential benefit to the company of almost £500,000 per year and had a positive impact on staff motivation and productivity.
He explained: “There were three main parts to the NVQ project: reducing waste in an aerofoil development programme; reducing damage to a production part; and lost staff time across the organisation.
“We addressed each of these in a structured way, using several operational techniques such as fishbone diagrams, value stream mapping and statistical data analysis to solve the problems.
“This resulted in a wide range of benefits: reduced time spent looking for tools; material for jobs easily identified; improved layout; time saved cleaning down machines; improved visual appearance of work areas; 5S checklists in place; SOPs in place. And each member of the team achieved an NVQ qualification.
