RAIL E
ON THE RIGHT TRACK WITH HYPERMILL
stablished in 1947, Howells Railway Products is one of the UK rail industry’s leading manufacturers. The Manchester-based company has evolved over almost 80 years into a precision specialist, supplying over 1,000 product lines to major rail operators, OEMs, and infrastructure owners across six continents. Customers such as Network Rail, Alstom, Siemens, Thales, Bombardier, and Hitachi rely on Howells for CNC-machined components – all programmed with hyperMILL CAD/CAM software from OPEN MIND Technologies.
To support ongoing growth and an increasingly complex order book, the company invested in hyperMILL just over 18 months ago to streamline manufacturing processes. The decision has significantly enhanced Howells’ CNC machine shop productivity, precision, and competitive position – and the transformation is only just beginning.
Director David Howells traces the business from its humble beginnings. “The company was formed by my grandfather, Edward Stanley. He came out of the RAF with £70 in his pocket, his demob suit, and the one trade he knew. He was a wireless engineer in the RAF, so he started a business fixing TVs and radios - that’s how the company began.”
The company now designs and manufactures its own established product range that includes signals, rail indicators, light engines, AWS inductors, transformers, flasher relays, AWS and APC receivers whilst simultaneously running a busy CNC machine shop. The company holds Rail Industry Supplier Qualification Scheme (RISQS) approval and ISO:9001 certification, reflecting the exacting standards its customers demand.
INVESTING IN CNC CAPABILITY In recent years, Howells has made substantial investments in its CNC machine shop, which now houses 26 machines ranging from 3 to 5-axis machining and turning centres. The addition of a new 40,000sq/ft CNC workshop has provided the capacity and environment to undertake increasingly complex, high-value work alongside the company’s core rail product manufacturing.
As the machine shop manager at Howells, Justin Johnson has been at the forefront of driving this expansion. With over 20 years of experience in CNC programming and manufacturing, he has been instrumental in identifying where technology investment can deliver the greatest return. “We’ve got a wide range of products from trackside through to maintenance, and we’re always looking to invest in the best technologies. Since increasing our inventory of 5-axis machines, we’ve found a lot of dead cycle time with tool paths. It just didn’t look right compared to what we were seeing at exhibitions
38 Spring 2026 UKManufacturing
and across the industry - our existing software wasn’t keeping pace with the machines’ potential.” The decision to invest in new CAD/CAM software was made carefully. Johnson and his team compared hyperMILL with several other leading providers. Drawing on his extensive programming background, Johnson quickly recognised that hyperMILL offered something beyond what he had encountered before. “I’ve had over 20 years in programming software, and hyperMILL really, really surprised me with how good it is. The Virtual Machine technology has been second to none.” For Howells, the combination of user-friendliness, processing speed and advanced 5-axis capability proved decisive. “It’s really user-friendly, and programming and machining times have been compressed significantly. We had a vacuum forming tool come through the workshop, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it with our existing software. We’ve had two software systems over the years, but with hyperMILL, parts like this aren’t an issue. We were able to do the part, get it out, and it looked amazing.”
THE VIRTUAL MACHINE: CONFIDENCE ON THE SHOP FLOOR
One of the most significant improvements since adopting hyperMILL has been the step-change in simulation capability. For Howells’ CNC programmer Alexander Barnes, who works directly with the software on a daily basis, Virtual Machine has fundamentally changed how jobs are prepared and verified before they reach the machine tool.
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