When I arrived, in order to quote a price, potential suppliers all queued for a custom designed drawing, usually between three and six suppliers. I also observed, from Don Walker, Rearsby Sales & Finance Manager, that often the customer’s buyers wanted us to get the job (quality, reliable, responsive supplier) but at the lowest quoted price provided by a competitor - often with whom they wouldn't dream of placing an order. This was especially true for critical products; components associated with braking, steering - holding the wheels to the vehicle. Many of Rearsby's products were in these safety-critical component areas. Get it wrong on an aircraft and…this was Rearsby's heritage.
How did we gain advantage over our competitors?
My first act was designed to avoid joining the queue of up to six make-to-print metal-bashers all quoting. I was determined to make this a queue of only one.
I established Rearsby Design & Development under a most capable engineer, Leon Wacnianin, a rather noble Polish gentleman of great integrity and intellect, a capable long-service process engineer. Leon had been imprisoned by the Russians at the Polish border, transported to Odessa, where he escaped and walked to Italy. He joined up with the British forces, ending up in the UK post-war, in the Polish community in Melton Mowbray. Leon was dapper dresser and possessed the most wonderful Disney-esk professorial Polish/English accent, which came across with great authority and integrity, especially to customer engineers meeting him for the first time. “This man knows his stuff.”
I observed, laudably, Rearsby always ‘walked through the front door’ of our customers, in particular those vehicle builders within BL. We never sought any special treatment, proudly so and we were treated no differently from any third party competitor. Only Alford & Alder amongst the SU-Butec companies worked like this. I was very comfortable with this arms length independence. It was the right way to be. No favours, nothing artificial or propped up by 'sister' organisations. No ‘corporate games’. As a result we KNEW we were competitive. Rearsby was a real arms-length business. We knew that and so did our customers.
I observed seasoned Rearsby production engineers, studying customer-designed drawings, bemoaning "That feature is a problem; it will not work!" They were invariably correct. These components fell firmly within our expertise. Furthermore our customer designers had limited understanding of the capability of manufacturing processes. Which process was best suited to consistently achieve critical features? Which processes were the cheapest to consistently achieve quality? Indeed, which processes did Rearsby have installed and were expert at?
Sixty plus percent of any product cost is established (fixed) at the design stage. If we didn’t have control of the design, we didn’t have control or influence over the cost. Importantly, as manufacturers we understood process and factory costs of a variety of processes. We had about the same number of basic engineering processes as you would find in our vehicle customers – this was unusual for a company of our size. This was partly as a result of the aircraft heritage, but also the relative remoteness from the centre of the supplier industry in and around the West Midlands. It was more convenient to carry out the process at Rearsby than use a 130 mile round trip to a sub-supplier.
Next I created our own Design and Development function. I imagine everyone has an idea of the design function. The person with the pencil, or rather draughting machine (sophisticated tee-square). Today a CAD terminal, turning ideas into (2D) drawings in order that others can transform those ideas into (3D) reality.
What is Development? This critical stage encompasses building the prototypes and then test, modify, test, modify, test… until we are assured the design will function faultlessly in the end users hands.
In the past some companies tested their designs on their customers. This (lack of) approach gave rise to quality, reliability, product re-call and consequential brand damage issues. Like night follows day.
In Rearsby's case we constructed test programs and built test rigs for accelerated proving of designs over 100,000s of cycles. Any issues arising were fed back into the design and resolved. New prototypes were made and these re-tested over and over again. Often a quality reliable product is a triumph of development over design.
The next task was to persuade customers, especially their design functions, that this would aid them greatly. Upon receiving the Austin Metro handbrake drawing from the Longbridge Austin Design Office (ADO), my engineers saw significant problems with the design. We pointed this out (two years before launch) but were commanded to quote to drawing. And following the order win, we tooled it up and ‘made to print'.
However, with no surprise to us, just prior to launch of the much awaited Austin Metro, Longbridge braking and chassis engineers reported significant problems with the handbrake… Help! Rearsby engineers redesigned, tested, retooled in weeks and met the production launch date and launch volumes thereafter.
At the post mortem this gave me the perfect opportunity to say "How often do you design a new handbrake? Every three years? Who do you use - the lad in the corner? During that three year period, we will introduce a dozen handbrakes for a variety of customers, adding both design and manufacturing improvements on each one. We can pass that expertise on. Why not use us next time to design the handbrake for you?" They did from then on.
Of course this severely disadvantaged our competitors. When our customer buyers sent our drawings to metal-bashing competitors and we discovered this and called ‘foul’. The design was our industrial property and was built round our current and future manufacturing processes. Nevertheless, as usual, our customer buyers wanted our strength in depth, but at a West Midlands metal basher prices. This was the business we were in!
To my delight in 1982 I discovered that this model of Supplier-OEM relationship was exactly how Japanese industry worked across the board. We were on our way before we knew we were!
The rest, as they say, is history. Rearsby designed all future BL hand brakes and later, pedal boxes and gearshifts for all customers. We never looked back. This put us at a great advantage over the traditional ‘Midlands Metal Bashers’ who had no design abilities. This was my (cunning) plan. Place my competitor at a disadvantage. Over the next few short years, we dispatched all our UK competitors on handbrakes and pedal boxes to the history bin. Victory is sweet!
We were under similar pressure on some of the other components I inherited. Clutch plates being a perfect example. We were no match for Borg & Beck with their long established in-depth expertise on clutch systems…