HELPING AN AEROSPACE COMPANY SPREAD ITS WINGS

Yorkshire-based engineering company Produmax, global experts in flight control components and assemblies, won The Manufacturer MX (TMMX) Leadership & Strategy award in November 2022. The company’s collaborative journey with IfM Engage has been crucial in helping it succeed in a volatile global market and build resilience for the future

IfM Engage, the knowledge-transfer arm of the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), began working with Otleybased engineering company Produmax in 2014 as part of the Sharing in Growth (SiG) programme, which supports UK manufacturing and engineering companies to increase cost competitiveness, grow capability and sustainability.

With a £5m turnover, Produmax was one of the smallest SiG beneficiaries at that time. However, with plans to move the whole organisation to a new stateof-the-art factory in nearby Shipley, the company had high ambitions to grow, develop its capabilities and nurture its workforce. In 2014, IfM Engage began working collaboratively with SiG to develop Produmax’s strategy for doubling turnover to £10m by 2020.

Tools and approaches included:

• The Prioritisation Diagnostic tool to understand strategic business priorities, identify a manageable number of objectives and get buy-in from the management team to address objectives.

• Strategy Development workshops to investigate and understand the internal and external environment for the company, explore a range of potential strategic options and then decide upon a future action plan. Following these workshops, Produmax's senior leadership team was inspired to become ‘Engineering Superheroes’ who would commit to engaging and inspiring their wider team so they could further develop their skills and contribute to growing the business.

• Strategy Refresh workshops in 2017 to further develop the strategic landscape for the company. These workshops involved identifying and prioritising external drivers, market-facing opportunities and developing an objective and transparent framework (Mapping Opportunity v Feasibility) to evaluate and build topic roadmaps for a portfolio of the company’s prioritised options. The Opportunity v Feasibility framework and topic roadmapping were then drawn upon again in 2018 and 2019 to further evaluate and build Produmax’s portfolio.