Elastic workforce is the in-phrase at Matara. We are all familiar with the negative implications of the credit crunch, but what happens when business starts to grow again?
Over the past 13 years, Matara UK has earned a reputation for offering a genuine same-day manufacturing service on its range of rodless pneumatic cylinders, VDMA cylinders and belt actuators - often coming to the rescue of customers with a breakdown emergency on their hands.
Today, however, it seems that many customers are themselves securing orders for machinery on very short lead times and, in turn they are relying on Matara to manufacture and eliver components within 48 hours, often in large quantities. Matara managing director, David Chanin takes up the story:
"I am often asked by our overseas partners, PMI and Mindman, what types of machines are typically manufactured in the UK and what types of UK based companies consume the most in terms of pneumatics, linear rail and ball screws. Twenty five Years ago this question would be easy to answer, but today I believe it to be a far more difficult task. The UK still has pockets of large machine manufactures often producing quality equipment that is unavailable throughout the rest of the world."
Since the onset of the credit crunch, Matara has, on a daily basis, analysed the quantity of sales orders it processes and the total daily value of these orders, comparing this with equivalent periods some 12, 24 and 36 months ago. What is very clear is that when the politicians were mentioning green shoots in June and the financial media were rubbishing such reports, Matara started to see a dramatic upturn in its business with a significant increase in sales towards the end of the last five months - albeit with some huge daily deviations.
These daily deviations and their nature must, believes Chanin, be common throughout manufacturing industry and as such, must be making the planning of both labour and stock extremely difficult. As an example, in September of this year, Matara took an order for 36 25mm x 1,100mm ball screws; the company rose to this challenge, with machining and delivery accomplished in just just 36 hours.
Matara ise the sole UK agent for PMI (Taiwan), which is a leading manufacturer of linear rails, ball screws and ball screw actuators. Fourteen months ago, 80% of PMI’s sales were to the Asian machine tool market, and the remaining 20% was to the automation sector.
It is common knowledge that the Asian machine tool market is operating at a level 85% lower than it was in 2008 (though this has started to change in the last two months). However, by investing in R&D and changing its focus, PMI has also returned to almost the same revenue and profit levels of 2008.
The split however is totally reversed with the automation sector consuming 80% of the factory's capacity.
New products include the KM series linear actuator which enables smooth, precise and consistent guided movement in a very compact footprint.
Miniature linear guides are also now available from 3mm width to 15mm width.
As is the case at Matara, both PMI and Mindman are having to employ additional labour and are asking existing staff to work longer hours - often at short notice.
So what is next year going to bring? Is this a false start? Davis Chanin again:
"November shows no sign of slowing up so it looks like a case of 'more of the same'".