Waste disposal/Infection control
equally, if not more keen, to get across to me the level of skill, innovation, and engineering expertise, and particularly the attention to detail, that goes into each system’s design.
A fresh perspective
Among those I spoke to were MD, Stuart Anderson, who joined Haigh in July 2015, having immediately previously being head of operations at a global healthcare supplier. Earlier in his career, however, having gained a BEng Electronic and Electrical Engineering degree, he spent over 15 years in the car industry, where his professional roles included production manager; Trim and Final Assembly Manufacturing engineering manager, and senior manager, Manufacturing Engineering. While impressed with Haigh Engineering’s ‘traditional’ engineering pedigree from the outset, he feels he has been able to bring to the company a fresh perspective, in areas such as lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and generally boosting production efficiency and customer responsiveness. “One of the key attractions of Haigh,” he told me, “was that the business not only designs, but also manufactures and assembles, all its own products.”
Customer focus
Bringing some of his broader ‘customer focus’ expertise from the manufacturing sector to his new role, one of Stuart Anderson’s key actions since joining has been to get site surveys for customers undertaken by engineers, rather than, as previously, sales personnel. He said: “Take the automotive sector as an analogy; when you visit a dealership to get your car serviced, you don’t park it in the showroom; you go straight to the service department and the mechanics, who will be independent, and will look it over really thoroughly. Similarly, healthcare estates managers want to know someone has done an engineering, rather than a sales assessment, of their equipment.”
Growing export sales One of the biggest customers for the company’s macerators is the NHS, although it is also exporting more and more; export sales now account for around 40% of turnover. Stuart Anderson said: “One of the key things I have got us to look at since I joined is what our customers actually want, and how we are helping them. Liaison with healthcare estates personnel was, for example, very much behind our introduction of the Premium Flow feature. Ultimately, our macerators must be able to do the job day-after-day, help maintain infection control, and ensure that hospital drains keep flowing. We have always tried to work like this, to make estates and facilities personnel’s job easier.” Recently, Stuart Anderson had
72 Health Estate Journal September 2016
Manufacturing manager, David Brown, joined Haigh as a 17-year-old technical apprentice in 1977.
visited several hospital estates and facilities departments to ask the teams there how Haigh could best help them, and ‘what really makes a difference’.
A prime example
A prime example of responding to customer needs, the Haigh MD told me, was the company’s Quattro four-item pulp macerator, ‘designed around the fact that most sluice rooms are small’. The Quattro is thus ‘32 per cent smaller’ than its competitors, while the low height, wide hopper was designed with the nursing staff who will use it. Stuart Anderson explained: “Engineering a loading height seven inches lower than some competitor required considerable expertise.” He continued: “As in the automotive
industry, good product evolution requires keeping in constant touch with your customers, and identifying the features they need and want. That is very much the ethos I have sought to bring here. We are not a huge corporate; our ethos is to develop really close customer relationships. This extends to our
maintenance; when we receive a call about a problem from a customer, undertaking all the engineering here, and holding our parts in-house, we can respond extremely quickly, meaning the minimum of downtime.”
A tailored service offering Some estates teams’ engineering expertise was such, he explained, that they could resolve most issues themselves, while other Trusts relied more on a service contract. Haigh is in the process of developing a tailored service offering, including training. Stuart Anderson said: “While a number of our competitors claim to offer servicing, we would argue that often the services are not measured. We want to help estates managers and healthcare engineers manage their assets; some of the biggest hospitals have 100 macerators on site, and it is difficult to keep track of them all.”
Manufacturing manager’s
The ‘flagship’ Quattro macerator; opening is via a ‘light touch’ button on the top, or via an optional foot pedal, while a wide hopper facilitates safe loading.
long service Following this interesting discussion, I met with Haigh’s manufacturing manager, David Brown, who joined the company as a 17-year-old technical apprentice in 1977. Continuity of service is one of the key characteristics Haigh prides itself on in its workforce. David Brown said: “Many of my team are also ex-apprentices, and you will get a flavour of that as we look around the factory.” I was then given a fascinating overview and tour of the factory and the various manufacturing processes undertaken there by a man who Stuart Anderson acknowledged had held ‘pretty well every possible engineering and manufacturing role’ during his 39 years with Haigh. David Brown explained, as we looked at a number of macerators in construction, that the machines incorporate large
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