7 minute read
Hold Fast
A GLOBAL LEADER IN FASTENING TECHNOLOGIES SINCE IT WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1942, PENNENGINEERING OPENED ITS GALWAY FACILITY IN 2001. TWENTY YEARS ON, THE IRISH OPERATION IS LEADING THE WAY WHEN IT COMES TO INNOVATION AND TRAINING AND ITS PRESIDENT, MARY ANN FLEMING FERGUS, SAYS ITS GREATEST STRENGTH IS ITS PEOPLE.
BY MEG WALKER
When I took up my role in 2005, PennEngineering was a very different company to what it is today. We had a staff of 80. My role was to raise the value of this site to a full service one for the European market, and become the European headquarters of PennEngineering. With the support of the board, I began implementing strategic changes, creating a move “up the value chain” by adding R&D, sales, supply chain, warehouse, applications engineering, heat treatment and plating to the business. This structural reengineering secured the longevity of the business in Ireland and laid the foundations for sustainable long-term growth. This pivotal point in PEM Galway’s history led to significant investment by the board, who invested millions of euros in capital equipment, buildings and people. The workforce has grown from 80 people in 2001 to over 200 today. We have full responsibility for our P&L, decision making, and growth here locally and also have 11 salespeople across Europe, and five service engineers. We sell 90% of our product to our distribution partners spread across all 27 EU countries.
MAry Ann Fergus Flemming, President, PennEngineering
Our manufacturing plant operates on a continuous improvement environment. We have an amazing, talented team in Europe and take pride in our focus on training and development. We developed a diploma in Engineering college course with our local training agency in Galway, specifically for operators, which is now being used by other companies across Ireland. Our next step in this business improvement journey is to adopt an Industry 4.0 strategy, so we’re able to compete further. We started the groundwork for this move over a year ago, and to continue on that journey, we have to grow the talents of our team, taking a team that was hired over the last 30-40 years into what was a mechanical engineering business into a business that’s going to support the customers and markets of the future.
We want to grow this business to a level that it makes us a strong contender in our marketplace. We want to increase sales in the next number of years by 100%. In order to achieve this, it is necessary for us to adopt Industry 4.0 as one of our principal manufacturing strategies and continue to develop our Lean programmes and become a Lean leader in our organisation. We have to continue to be innovative in our R&D teams and our applications engineering teams with value-add responses to customers for both fasteners and installation systems. We will also continue to invest in our people – 30% of our workforce are in training and development, and we want to grow that too. We have six people completing a master’s in Lean Management Systems in University of Limerick and five more completing Mechatronics courses in GMIT, AIT, and IT Sligo. Our operators are continuing to complete level 6 and 7 engineering courses to prepare them for our future needs. From a capital point of view, we’ll continue to invest and support that growth as well, which means $2-3 million per year invested in Galway by our owners. As a business, we must continue to innovate and improve in order to survive.
We do face challenges on a day to day basis. We like to turn our challenges into opportunities for success. One challenge is staying ahead of our customer needs, so we introduce new products to early adopter customers before releases for optimum success. “Our people are our strength. They deliver a level of excellence in quality and service to our customers; we have a “can do” attitude and we strive to continuously improve across all departments.”
One of our biggest challenges is competitor copycat products. PennEngineering is the innovator, inventor, and design leader for self-clinching fasteners, but our competitors copy the volume end of our catalogue product and sell it at a much cheaper price and lower quality. We are the market leader; we have a full support site here in Galway that can help our customers in Europe – we cannot do this level of innovation and customer service cheaply. So, the challenge is to win market share against those competitors by working with customers so they can see our value. We have great success in many markets, especially the automotive market, in designing new products and sustaining print position but this requires full commitment to R&D for long-term success.
Virtual is great, but there is nothing like meeting people face to face. Particularly in our business, where we are trying to convince a customer of a new innovation or explaining the highly technical results of our testing and proving how it will work in the customer’s application. It is much easier if you can touch and feel that and see how genuine the offering is. Managing teams remotely is challenging. People trust you more when they see you. But I do think we have learned a lot this past year and we’ll be more careful with our time going forward and smarter about business travel.
Our people are key to our success. One of the most important things to have if you want to work here is a desire to learn and improve. We’re ever-evolving, so we hire people that fit that criteria – an interest in continuous improvement, a willingness to learn, ambition, and an ability to be open, flexible and agile. We’re looking for people who want a secure a job – our length of service is quite strong. We also want people that bring innovation and knowledge to the company. Everything we do here we do as a team. We do a huge amount of internal training. And the key is to have opportunities for them to move into. That is why growth is so important.
The keys to leading a large, global team are… Number one, you must trust your team. Number two, you must delegate. And number three is key – constant communication is essential, as is instilling the values of myself as the leader and the values of the company to all team members. I constantly communicate the values of the business: customer focussed, innovative, respect, collaboration, and integrity. Everybody has a role to play, and that role is extremely important. It doesn’t matter if you are the last person in the door or the more senior executive – everybody has an important role, and that role makes the business a success.
What makes Ireland a unique place to do business is its people. In Galway, we are leading the way in so many innovations within PennEngineering, and that’s because of our people. Our people are our strength. They deliver a level of excellence in quality and service to our customers; we have a “can do” attitude and we strive to continuously improve across all departments. This has led us to achieve the results which will sustain our business and people’s jobs into the future. We have NUIG in Galway, GMIT, and lots of supporting colleges around us, so our ability to hire people is fantastic. That is one of the real difficulties they have in some of the other sites – attracting people into this industry. People want to work here. That is why there’s never a hesitation about the investment by our corporate team – they know we run a profitable business that can hire great people. Being close to the market in Europe and being part of the EU is important. The other things – like corporate tax – are really minor in our world. Openness to the market, flexibility, and what our people can do is key.
We want to grow this business to a level that it makes us a strong contender in our marketplace. We want to increase sales in the next number of years by 100%. In order to achieve this, it is necessary for us to adopt Industry 4.0 as one of our principal manufacturing strategies and continue to develop our Lean programmes and become a Lean leader in our organisation. We have to continue to be innovative in our R&D teams and our applications engineering teams with value-add responses to customers for both fasteners and installation systems. We will also continue to invest in our people – 30% of our workforce are in training and development, and we want
