Business is served!

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, but in today’s highly competitive environment the service is important too - especially if composite manufacturing companies are to continue winning repeat business. Mike Richardson reports. Although price, quality and on-time delivery are a given, ask any company about any other type of demand placed on them by their customers and invariably they will point to the importance of building good customer relationships. So it’s while I’m sat in the offices of Dorset-based machining, cutting and kitting services specialist, MSA Manufacturing with company CEO, Max Osmond and business development manager, Leo Loaiza that Max reveals his own unique and personal take on the art of customer relationship management. “Every customer relationship is special to us and vital to what we do,” he begins. “Both Leo and I have hotel restaurant management backgrounds and what is absolutely critical is our focus on getting the right solution to the customer – and this means establishing the right relationships. The thrill I get from seeing a customer benefit from using what we have produced is exactly the same feeling I used to get when I worked in a restaurant. But it’s not just the food that is important - the service is important too. “This is exactly the same principle I try and adopt when working in the composites manufacturing industry. MSA’s enjoyment comes not only from working on new product development programmes, but also from building customer relationships and knowing that we’re working with customers that want to work with us and appreciate what we do.” Osmond points to a book called Moments of truth by Swedish businessman, Jan Carlzon. Carlzon’s ‘moment of truth’ centred on his tenure as president & CEO of SAS Group (Scandinavian Airlines), and the fact that on a three-hour flight, the customer has as few as five interactions with the staff, which last approximately 15 seconds. The inference here is that any supplier only has a limited amount of time to create the right impression. “Carlzon said that it is in those 15 seconds or moments of truth that the customer decides whether or not they are going to carry on using you,” Osmond explains. “For MSA, one of our moments of truth is when the customer removes one of our products from our packaging shipment and it works perfectly. It’s at this point that the customer will decide whether they want to continue using us. Customer relationships are really important to us and we generally prefer not to work with people that don’t hold the same values and culture to business as we do because it generally ends up being a relationship that just doesn’t work.” Initially established in 1969, MSA Manufacturing began kitting foam core components for the marine industry in 2005, having already seen the benefits of kitting tool chests for specific maintenance tasks within the defence and aerospace industries. Today, the company machines and kit-cuts core and reinforcement materials for composite manufacturers working in the marine, automotive, renewables and aerospace industries, specialising in kitting and cutting 2D/3D shaped foams, glass fibre and carbon fibre textiles among others. MSA’s cutting capability includes 3- and 5-axis machining, 3- and 5-axis waterjet, CNC knife cutting and surface flattening, and digitising. The company also has cold storage for prepregs and a temperature-controlled cutting environment. “We originally began by supplying Sunseeker International PVC core material products,” Osmond continues. “The logical extension of this was in servicing mostly marine companies in the market for composite materials. Eventually, people started noticing the benefits of our kitting services and the savings in time and the consistent quality, and as a result we began receiving more enquiries for cutting and kitting glass and carbon fibre textiles. “Over time we’ve purchased our own freezer space for cutting and storing prepregs and gradually moved from simply machining foam cores into cutting laminates and honeycomb materials using waterjet techniques. Essentially, our entire business has grown from purely kitting core materials through to kitting core materials with reinforcement materials and machining of components and ancillary parts to kitting across a wide variety of materials that we supply into the marine, automotive, rail, aerospace and power generation industries.” And all these industries require the kit cutting of some fairly large components too. Osmond reckons that whilst the company has made some material saving improvements for customers, it’s often the case that there aren’t huge nesting benefits to be gained. Instead, where there are significant nesting benefits is in how MSA Manufacturing processes and packs the customers’ kits of parts. “If I was being completely blunt about it, a flatbed cutter is simply a Stanley knife mounted on a CNC machine,” he notes. “Yes, we’re cutting the material in a standard way, but what really differentiates us is how we postprocess and feed the material. We’ve installed Anaglyph’s PlyMatch camera-driven positioning system which uses multiple cameras and multiple monitors. It enables us to layup laminate and reinforcement material in the correct position quickly and with thorough traceability. This system allows us to position a physical part onto a live picture using CAD files overlaid onto live data.” Osmond says MSA Manufacturing’s present facility - which is specifically a textile centre for cutting reinforcements - has now grown to 16,500ft² and as a result, the company is recruiting more staff and becoming involved in new production processes. “One of the responsibilities I feel as a business owner means offering employment opportunities and giving my employees a livelihood – this really matters to me,” he concludes. “We still have to make tough decisions in the people we employ, but maintaining our role as an independent UK company is vital because it’s the small businesses that provide the UK’s manufacturing backbone. We still need the independent companies to provide jobs and continue being creative, because in my opinion you don’t always get this from the larger companies.” www.msamfg.co.uk