Making Machinery Pay

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Jade Consulting is focussed on ensuring machinery purchases bring the return on investment that justify their purchase in the first instance. The Fabricator’s Ed Humphreys talks to Jade co-owners Adam Jones and Sean Mackey.

Making significant capital investments in a challenging and unpredictable economic environment can be filled with fear and trepidation. In an industry of stagnant sales, the ever-present risk of participating in the race to the bottom and the growing stress on profit margins, means you are forever chasing the tail of the price-quality cycle.

Jade Consulting, part of Jade Engineering, occupies a position between systems houses and the fabricators. This gives it probably the most thorough knowledge and understanding of the fabrication landscape in the UK. It can often come up with solutions which are so simple and low cost that you wonder why it was never thought of before.

And therein lies the conundrum for many fabricators – how can you ask for something that you do not know even exists? There is a comfort in the familiarity of every day, which means that sometimes you do not see the wood for the trees. Maintaining existing systems when large scale investment is not practical can narrow your vision and keep you focused on spinning plates rather than analysing those day-to-day operations.

 

Butt welder cleaner

It was this mindset that led Jade to bringing out the simplest and lowest cost of time savers – one that is already seeing a growing list of fabricators adding their names to the waitlist for delivery – the Jade JBC2 reverse butt welder cleaner.

This small piece of kit has a small footprint, which means it can sit in even the most restricted of factory spaces. It mechanises what has always been a manual technique carried out by a skilled operative with a moon knife. Consequently, this £7,000 piece of kit can significantly improve the speed, efficiency and quality consistency whilst eradicating the potential for damaged frames and consequent remakes.

 

New perspective

“Sometimes the simplest of solutions is hiding in plain sight,” says Adam Jones, co-owner of Jade alongside his co-founder Sean Mackey. “Creating efficiencies and improving quality – changes that often seem to be expensive and time consuming – can often be achieved by taking a step back and gaining a new perspective. This is exactly the path we followed when we came up with the design for the JBC2.

“This type of weld has always been carried out by hand, despite the popularity of this type of window. A number of our customers asked if we could do anything that could improve the process from the point of view of efficiency and quality, so we put the problem into the melting pot that drives Jade Consulting. And whilst this division increasingly designs and fulfils full production lines, we love a challenge.”

 

Production overhauls are unecessary

Jones and Mackey both believe that the industry has evolved to such a degree that radical overhauls of production lines are increasingly unnecessary, particularly in view of increasing demands on profit margins. While investment for scalability remains important, often the simplest of tweaks in processes can yield the biggest of gains.

Jade Consulting is shaping up to be a key resource for fabricators who want to explore more creative and intelligent ways to improve manufacturing efficiencies, over and above the more high profile five and six figures investments in new machinery. The JBC2 is a prime illustration of this as it is small, affordable and sits within an existing factory with minimal disruption to existing operations. 

 

Picture: Sean Mackey (left) and Adam Jones.

www.jade-eng.co.uk

Article written by Cathryn Ellis
25th November 2024

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