When BAE Systems announced it was shutting the Armstrong Works in Newcastle in mid-2012, there was understandable concern that one of the UK’s historic manufacturing sites was about to close its doors for the final time.
A renewed optimism surrounds the site three years later, following its acquisition by the Reece Group — an ambitious holding company behind five engineering firms that range from pipe-coiling and minefield clearance equipment through to road repair machines and sub-contract manufacturing.
The Armstrong Works is notable for its history and its sheer scale. It was established in 1847; over the years, it has made cars, locomotives, aircraft and — most recently — the Challenger Tank for the British Army. The building that currently stands on the site was built in 1982 by Vickers — before its merger with BAE Systems — and was the longest single-span manufacturing space in Europe, being 546m long with 33,000sq m under one roof.
Tim Rutter, chief ‘transformation officer’ at Reece Group, says: “The facility was designed to consolidate a number of different workshops. Vickers designed it from the ground up to be a flow-line facility from raw plate through welding into machining, painting, then assembly through to delivery.
“The concept of the site is almost a direct match to what Reece Group wants to do as a business, which makes it perfect for us. Many of the fundamental things that Vickers put in place also work for us, such as cranes on rails that run the full length of the factory and facilitate moving products from one end to the other during production.”
Consolidating activities
Reece Group acquired the site in August 2013 with the intention of moving most of its businesses in the North East to the one site. By this stage, Reece included the Responsive Group (acquired in November 2012) — a highly successful sub-contract engineering company located in several workshops (including one at Team Valley) that were home to more than 40 machine tools, including a large number of Mazak machines (
www.mazakeu.co.uk). These needed to be moved with minimal impact on production.
Mr Rutter said: “The plan was to move them one machine at a time, dovetailing the move plan to our production schedules so as to minimise individual machine down-time. We looked at which machines were going to cause us the biggest issues in terms of down-time adversely affecting customer schedules and looked at new machines that would cover capacity during the move while enhancing our production capabilities post-move.
“We got one of the new Mazak Slant Turn Nexus 550M lathes set up and commissioned in the Armstrong Works before we decommissioned the equivalent machine in our Team Valley works, so we didn’t lose any production capacity during the move. We rely on the Slant Turn Nexus to do all of our large turning, so it was an obvious one to duplicate.
“We also knew that we wanted another Integrex to complement the 3m-bed e-420 machine at Team Valley. We decided to buy an Integrex i-400 — our first full five-axis machine. We installed it in Armstrong Works, commissioned it and got it into production before moving the Integrex from Team Valley.”
However, the move was not the only reason for buying the new machines. “Taking the move out of the equation, they are probably the kind of machines we would have gone for anyway. The work we are doing includes combustor casings for a power generation customer; these are too big for our Mazak j-400 Integrex machines but are dwarfed by an e-420. The Integrex i-400 was perfect, supporting us through the move and giving us more capacity for other projects we knew we were likely to win.”
Plug and go
Mr Rutter says the key to the relocation was getting the services in place before any machine was moved. “We needed to ensure that when a machine arrived, we could just plug it in and go. The preparation of services had to happen in parallel with the decommissioning activity. When a machine was delivered, compressed air and electrics were all ready.
“Our close working relationship with Mazak’s service engineers has also been vital in delivering the relocation plan, because there’s a lot more to moving a machine tool than just unplugging it and putting it on the back of a truck. They have been an enormous help in stripping machines down into transportable packages, re-installing them, re-levelling them, calibrating them and getting them back to their original working condition.
“When we sat down at the start of the year to plan the move and formulate our budgets, we were anticipating losing quite a lot of production. The reality is that machines were down for two days on average; the longest was two weeks for a large horizontal machining centre — a Mazak HCN 8800-2.”
In the Armstrong Works, most of the Mazak machines are grouped together in one area, which Mr Rutter calls Mazak Alley “because as you walk down the facility, you are flanked on both sides by Mazaks.”
However, there are more Mazak machines in the Reece Group than those in Mazak Alley.
“Responsive has a business unit called Rapid Solutions, which is being targeted at the new product development and prototype markets. The customer type is different, requiring shorter lead times. We are using different technology, more entry-level-type milling and turning technology such as Mazak Quick Turn Smart 200 and 300M turning centres, a Vertical Centre Smart VCS530A and a larger VTC 300C that offers a pendulum machining capability.”
In the future, Mr Rutter sees the works also being able to offer stand-alone manufacturing cells for specific customers. “We’ve already had people who looked around the site and said ‘you’ve got so much space, how about we set up a manufacturing cell in here for you to make our products?’ That’s the future, end-to-end machining capability from prototype through to finished machining — all in one facility.”