Kestrel staff have the tools to drive efficiency

Kestrel is saving resources and boosting efficiency by bringing more of its tool maintenance and refurbishment in-house.

The investment in the toolroom was the brainchild of Danny Gaffney, employee for 15 years, starting out as a tool setter.

When he moved in to the toolroom, upon the retirement of the previous supervisor, Danny set about creating a plan. The aims of this plan were to ‘save money and make money’.

Potential

The plan was presented to Kestrel operations director Rich Amison, who quickly saw its potential.

Danny says: “With a toolroom of one, we were outsourcing a lot of work. I felt that we could become more efficient with a stronger toolroom, and once I compared the costs of outsourcing compared to bringing the skills in house I took it to operations director Rich Amison. He backed the plan and gave me everything we needed to make it a success.”

The team has not only expanded to six, but now works shifts to ensure two technicians are always on site.  They have completed 15 full refurbishments, helping to drive efficiency, ensuring tools are working at their optimum levels, in turn boosting the quality and output of manufactured items.

The work being in-house creates new jobs and greater opportunities for those working in the toolroom to gain new skills.

The technicians themselves benefit working together solving problems and coming up with creative solutions. All this is done with a sense of purpose and comradery, that was a real strength in the COVID lockdowns.

He adds: “I think we all feel that work has given us some normality throughout the pandemic and that’s spurred us on. We’re now taking on maintenance work and our next major project is to build our own tools from scratch.”