Dutton Engineering (Woodside)

Dutton Engineering (Woodside) Limited is a subcontract sheet metal working company, based in Sandy in Bedfordshire and currently employing 50 people. Dutton specialises in the fabrication of stainless steel, mild steel and aluminium. It offers a full design-to-manufacture service, and production of prototypes, small batches and volume production.

The company was founded in 1972 in Luton in Bedfordshire and serviced the growing electronic industries throughout the 70s, and moved to its present purpose built factory in Sandy in 1980. Dutton was awarded BS5750 Part 2 in 1984, and was one of the early companies to receive this certification. In the 80s the company developed specialist skills in developing stainless steel housings for the electronics industry. In 1988 the company was approved to ISO9002 part 2. Dutton is a Key Member of the British Quality Foundation and uses the EFQM model to help drive its continuous improvement programme.

Dutton Engineering has a high level of commitment to achieving world class standards, and has been on its journey to excellence since 1989. The company began with training in Total Quality, involvement of the workforce in Kaizen (Continuous Improvement), and developing partnerships with customers and suppliers. The culture has moved from a very traditional organisation to a very flat structure based around teams, with a high level of personal empowerment.

Dutton won the Wedgwood trophy in 1994, and the “Best SME” award in 1996; they also won an award for outstanding achievment 2002. Its most recent award was the “KPMG Anglia Enterprise” award for “Motivation”.

In 1997 Dutton launched a training division “Business Excellence Training”, which offers a full range of training and assistance to companies looking to improve their performance and adopt best practice.

Topics Covered

Kaizen and Lean Manufacturing	Kaizen Sharing our experience of continuous improvement - a simple scheme to start the process of workforce involvement to implement change. Lean Manufacturing Taking a look at the succesful projects taking place including: Total Productive Maintenance; 5s; One Piece Flow; Process Re-Engineering; and what Lean can do for your organisation.
Customer Focus	Working together with customers and suppliers to reduce lead times and reduce production costs.
People Development	Dutton has moved from a hierarchical supervised structure into self-managed teams. This, in turn, encourages involving the teams at all levels of the planning process. Our work has been recognised in the 1997 KPMG Enterprise Anglia Awards in the Motivation Category.

Dates

Topic

Capacity

Status

Location