Interview
Celebrating 60 years of Aerco
On the 28th September, aviation electrical and radio company, Aerco celebrates its 60th anniversary. CIE editor, Amy Wallington speaks to managing director, Rob Laughton, about the past 60 years and how they plan to celebrate
Rob Laughton A
erco, a family run company, was founded in September 1956 by Bill Laughton. He handed over running of the company in 2000 to his son, Rob Laughton but continued working in the company until shortly before he died in September 2013. At the time, there were three generations of the Laughton family working in the company: Bill, Rob, his wife, Fiona and their son, Harry.
Asked how the company started, Rob Laughton said, “It started as just my father as a technician working on light aircrafts in 1956, installing radio equipment and over the next 10 years, developed its engineering and technical capabilities servicing navigation lighting and other electrical aircraft equipment in both the civil aviation industry and the MOD. He employed between 20 and 30 people and they were based at Gatwick airfield before it was an airport. But as Gatwick developed into an airport, the demand for his kind of approach disappeared because bigger engineering maintenance companies moved in. So he had to change the business. “He changed it from being an engineering radio company to a distribution company and found that buying and selling the components that he was using for his business was a launch to moving the business on. And
12 September 2016 Components in Electronics
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surprisingly, at that time, around 1962 to 1963, there wasn’t really any distribution in the UK. Several distribution companies started up about that time but prior to that, engineering companies used to get them direct from the manufacturers.” Laughton has seen the company grow over time. Speaking about some of his highlights, Laughton said, “I have enjoyed developing the business. I also like how some of the junior staff that joined us 20-30 years ago are still with us and are now in senior positions. I think that’s a nice thing to reflect on. People have stayed with us for a long time and have learnt their way up from being apprentices to managers and operational managers and so on. We have always
been keen on developing members of staff and moving them up through the company. Our sales director, Nicki, joined us 22 years ago as an 18-year-old office junior. She actually came on a temporary contract and stuck with it all the way through and now she knows all our customers and products very well. And that’s just one example. “Some highlights more recently are the way that these days we are managing to sell into some of the largest companies in the country. And the business started 60 years ago as a small company and it’s now a proper SME and a well-established medium-sized company and I think that is reflected by the fact that we are able to sell to BAE Systems, Bombardier, Western Helicopters and people like that and they are happy to buy from us so that’s an achievement and something we like to look back on as well.” Aerco is a family run business. Having been passed down from his father, Laughton also hopes to do the same with his son in the future. “Harry joined us and he is learning the ropes and
learning his way around. He has spent a fair amount of time working hands on with the products. He has also spent time as a salesman, quoting customers on products that we can deliver and so on. And now he is concentrating more on how we are organised and procedures and processes and that kind of thing. “We have got a system here called ‘continuous improvement’ and the idea of that is that we routinely have small team meetings and talk about something that we are doing or some process that we have got and we try to identify what is wasted. We try to identify what we do that we don’t need to do or what efficiencies we can find. We put those in place and then do that again. But the idea being that we are continuously making small improvements and hopefully we will look back in five years’ time and you find that you have got rid of an awful lot of waste that would have otherwise been with you. And Harry’s very much involved with that. He is 25 and he’s where he wants to be. And increasingly, I’m sure he will become more experienced and more useful and
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