Youngman – competing on a global stage

The Youngman Group is a leading provider of innovative, high quality access equipment and systems, with turnover exceeding £30 million.

Rising costs and growing competition from Eastern Europe and China forced them to rethink their, largely manual, manufacturing process.

One option was to totally outsource their Access Tower manufacturing to China with the inevitable loss of jobs, flexibility and control. Instead Youngman opted to invest £2.5m in state-of the- art automated equipment, including robotics, for its plant in Maldon, UK.

Whilst some jobs were lost, others were created and the union was very supportive recognising that the long-term future of the plant, and of those remaining in it, would be more secure.

Payback was achieved in a relatively short period of time but more importantly unit costs were reduced allowing Youngman to compete for orders around the globe, and with one of the highest quality products available.

Other significant benefits have been the reduction in waste and reworked product, the reduction in stockholding and the increased flexibility both in variants and capacity.

The automated systems can produce 40 different variants and since output can be more than doubled, by simply running additional shifts, they can now compete for large short-term orders – something outsourcing would never have allowed.