After spending 12 years away from the UK wood processing industry in the sunnier climates of Asia Pacific, I must say the first few weeks of my home-coming have been enlightening and encouraging.
Besides commenting on the “Australian accent” I seem to have acquired since 1992, most companies I’ve visited so far have shown great interest in Asian manufacturing processes and how they can compete.
If you were making lower end “solid timber” furniture, you would find it difficult competing against Far Eastern producers. But companies processing mouldings, doors, windows and general DIY products can learn much from the Asian approach – in particular getting maximum yield from expensive raw material.
A factor common to successful Asian companies is that they apply technology as a primary objective and view the benefits of low labour costs and overheads as secondary. This improves competitiveness and ensures higher and more consistent product quality, while reducing training needs.
In UK timber processing, the future is also about improved raw material usage. This means looking at recovery techniques like timber scanning, optimising and finger-jointing and finding suitable recovery products. Also key is the application of technology to processing and production control, the maintenance of quality and to allow labour to be used only to add value. This will boost competitiveness and help expand product ranges, with little need to increase labour and the cost often met by raw material recovery.
In Asia, a simple task was to take a company making 20 containers of wood products a month and aim to make 21 without increasing labour, raw material costs or overheads. With a 40ft container-load worth a minimum of £10,000, this 5% increase adds £120,000 to the bottom line each year.
So I urge you to look at the opportunities to use technology and raw material better and see what you can achieve. I’m looking forward to imparting my experience from Asia Pacific to more of you in the months ahead – and I promise to do my best with the accent!
