Hi Jamie, you clearly bring a huge amount of experience to this role. What changes have you made in your first year in position?

Ha, yes thanks. RDD supported me to take a short course on Lean Organisation Management Techniques and as a result I’ve introduced 5S with workboards and a new work in progress rack so that every tool and scrap of material has its place. Implementing little changes like this has made the workshop more efficient. We’re constantly tuning and refining it to find even more time savings.

We’re now rolling out a Lean programme with the whole team to really embed that way of thinking and to streamline our operations further.

And your team are onboard with this?

Sure, I’ve only had positive feedback from them. The most important thing when I started managing the workshop was to make sure we created a positive culture, a family, which we have. It’s a tightknit team and I’m proud of what we’re achieving together.

Any plans to expand the team?

Actually we’ve invested heavily in training the existing team so that one person can now run two machines simultaneously. This means we can keep the team smaller as they are all more effective and proficient and their roles. We’re training them on different kit, so they are more versatile and don’t get stuck on one machine – it’s important to have some variety in your work and the opportunity to learn new skills constantly.

We’re upgrading our laser and vac forming rooms at the moment, which will improve how work flows through them and give the team chances to study different manufacturing techniques.

And how about you? What do you enjoy about your role here at RDD?

I like to be busy; I definitely work better under pressure without too much time to think! I like planning, having things set out in a routine, all in place... so our ongoing work in creating efficiencies suits me perfectly.

What’s next?

I’m only as good as my team, and we’ve built a really good one here. We’ll carry on working together on efficiencies and those little changes that can make a big impact.