Ishida Europe Ltd (
www.ishidaeurope.com), which designs and manufactures multi-head weighing machines plus weighing and packing line solutions for the food industry, has seen significant growth thanks to its decision to out-source part of its production.
The company, which has sites in Birmingham and Poole, turned to PP Electrical Systems (
www.powerpanels.uk.com) of Walsall to help it ease capacity issues and improve lead times.
The control and automation specialist now oversees the basic build of Ishida’s multi-head food weighers, including all the controls.
The weighers are then delivered on a just-in-time basis for the final fit and configuration before being sent to clients that supply some of the world’s largest supermarkets.
John Priest, operations director at Ishida Europe, said: “We used to try to do as much of the assembly as possible in-house, but that caused a problem with lead times and keeping up with demand. We reconsidered our approach to out-sourcing, and we contacted PP after seeing what it was doing for some of its customers.
“The results have been emphatic. We proved that the out-sourcing arrangement worked with multi-head weighers and then adopted it for other product lines, such as our innovative tray-sealing machines.
“The impact of strategic out-sourcing and a number of additional activities has delivered year-on-year growth of 20% since 2012, enabling us to employ 75 more people and winning us the Queen’s Award last year.”