Group technology and growth at Shalibane

Abstract

Abstract. The Shalibane Company of Camberley are tube manipulators and sheet metal workers, making parts mainly for the car industry. In 1991 they introduced Group Technology (GT). In eighteen months they reduced stocks by 60% (still falling); increased sales and output by 33%; increased the rate of return on investment by 24%; and increased the number of their employees by 12%. The cost of introducing the change was covered more than 3 times by the reduction in the stock investment. GT is shown to be a method which promotes growth and increases productivity, profitability and employment.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

JOHN L. BURBIDGE

JOHN L. BURBIDGE was born in Canada in 1915. He was educated at Wellington School, Som. and Cambridge University. Starting as an aprentice with the Bristol Aeroplane Co. and ending as managing director of the Darlington Wire Mills—with a break for service in the RAF during the war—he worked for 26 years in the British engineering industry. From 1962 until 1976, he worked for the International Labour Organisation in Poland, Cyprus, Egypt and Italy, where he was professor of production management in the ILO Turin International Centre. He is now a visiting professor at the Cranfield Institute of Technology, UK. He has written 15 books and over 200 papers on production planning, production control and group technology. He is a member of IFIP WG 5-7 on Computer-aided Production Management

JOHN HALSALL

JOHN HALSALL, 43, Shalibane's chairman and managing director, is an engineering graduate of Oxford University, who subsequently qualified as a chartered accountant with Ernst and Whinney's London office. After a period in corporate planning and audit with Alusuisse in Zurich, he became finance director and then general manager of Turner & Newall's filtration division and thereafter managing director of its European gasket operations. In 1984, he joined Siebe Pic as a divisional chief executive of the Tecalemit Group with whom he remained until joining Shalibane in February 1987. He lives in Remenham in Berkshire and is married with three young children.