Following a ‘record year’ in 2014, Everglade opened a second factory, close to its HQ in West London, last month.
The new factory features a Satellite XT cutting and machining centre, and new bead saws but according to Everglade’s operations director, Yogesh Gopal,
“it’s the investment in IT infrastructure that makes the combination of the two factories the most flexible and responsive manufacturing facility in the UK.”
Yogesh continued:
“What it means for customers is that we can make whatever they order quickly. We offer customers a greater choice with our range of windows and doors in both PVC-U and aluminium. There are always spikes in volumes of one product or another and now we have complete flexibility to move production to give us outstanding levels of dependability.”
Everglade has achieved this through investment in new software for production tracking and scheduling, management software for stockholding and an extension of the successful barcoding system first introduced in 2013. Real-time production information can be seen through easy to read dashboards.
Since joining Everglade five years ago, Yogesh has been focused on bringing the latest manufacturing software and technologies to the company. This meant updating the layout to incorporate new machinery, introducing barcoding and creating seamless, automated links between its processing software and machinery. With an additional £1 million of aïr products through the factory last year and investment in the second facility, Everglade says it has ‘set a new standard of responsiveness in production within the industry’.
“We have automated as much as we can, but because we do huge volumes of aluminium there’s a lot of hand finishing required,” added Yogesh.
“The new factory gives us space to be able to do this without it affecting the other manufacturing lines for PVC-U products. It’s all about the combination of man and machine to deliver excellent quality on time for customers.”
