World-class operational performance enhancing market competitiveness

Improving plants to make them operate more efficiently is fundamental to improving financial returns but it also generates a range of other benefits. The focus on Lean has helped drive greater operational flexibility while increasing responsiveness to our customers.

Since launching our new strategic direction in 2014 we have greatly improved operational performance across the Group and IMI Hydronic Engineering has been at the forefront of those improvements. As a result, our attractiveness as a supplier continues to be enhanced.

IMI Hydronic Engineering’s Olkusz plant in Poland and its Slovenian plant in Brežice were two of the first in the Group to achieve world-class operational performance. Since then Erwitte, Germany – one of IMI Hydronic Engineering’s largest plants – has more than doubled its Lean score from 33% in its first audit to 77% at the end of 2017. Through the application of Lean, the plant has achieved the lowest scrap rate in its history. The division’s Dallas plant in the USA now makes all products to order having installed one-piece flow production, which allows faster response to customer demands.

In addition to improving operational performance, we have overhauled our IT infrastructure. During 2017 the division successfully rolled-out on time and on budget new ERP systems in its Slovenian plant and across sales offices in 9 countries. Today IT systems across half of the division have been replaced by the new IMI Hydronic Engineering JD Edwards standard. This robust IT platform is crucial to the business and it has already enabled IMI Hydronic Engineering to access the large European retail market via the strategic partnerships it has developed with Saint-Gobain, Ferguson and GC Group, three of the four top European wholesalers.