Edgetech Expertise: Works Manager John Stark

Written by Chris Alderson

As Works Manager at Edgetech, John looks after production, quality control, logistics, maintenance and health & safety. Here he talks about his role at Edgetech and how there’s never a typical day at the factory…

 

 

I’ve been working at Edgetech since 2012.

My role as Works Manager is to look after the processes in our Super Spacer® bar manufacturing and distribution to make sure that everything is running smoothly and we deliver orders to customers on time and in-full.

Health and Safety at Edgetech

Safety is the number one focus for our parent company Quanex. Edgetech UK’s top priority is to make sure that all of our employees leave site exactly how they arrived. We have a safety team on site, safety champions and every meeting we attend has health and safety at the top of the agenda.

This year we launched a special safety initiative, called TruSafety. It’s a process for observing safety hazards on site and taking the right action to prevent them from causing an issue. Year to date we are above our target, a great achievement for the whole team.

I’m the health and safety point of contact for all of our employees, taking care of monthly updates and new awareness campaigns and making sure that everyone at Edgetech makes safety their number one priority.

Edgetech’s Logistics

Logistics is a really important part of maintaining great service for our customers. Edgetech has its own fleet to deliver products nationwide, including four HGVs and two vans.

I work closely with the logistics manager on a daily basis to make sure that Super Spacer orders are prepared and ready to get on the road so that we can deliver on time for customers. We understand the importance of right first time to customers.

We offer our customers lots of flexibility. If they need products urgently we can deliver them next day, or even the same day sometimes – that’s the main benefit of holding lots of stock.

Customers have to know they can rely on getting stocks from us fast. Manufacturing locally means that if they have a big order of an unusual size, we can handle it. And because we also manufacture in Germany and the USA, we have back-up to ensure even if we have downtime in manufacturing here we can still provide product for customers consistently. We call this security of supply and it gives us, as well as our customers, complete peace of mind.

Production Maintenance

We have three main production lines at the Edgetech manufacturing facility. An important part of ensuring that Super Spacer is top-quality is maintaining our manufacturing machines and planning maintenance well so that it causes minimal disruption to our productivity.

By keeping our manufacturing machines maintained we can keep them running in the most efficient way. Regular maintenance checks also help us to prevent break-downs which prevents problems for our customers.

Super Spacer Bar Quality Control

Quality control is a hugely important aspect of my role. At Edgetech we have over 26 years of product and manufacturing knowledge so we have the resource to make sure that the quality of our warm edge spacer bars is second to none.

The majority of quality control checks on Super Spacer products are carried out by the manufacturing team. They look at everything from density to tolerance using laser micrometres and take charge of inputting the data from our comprehensive twelve checks, tests and measurements throughout the manufacturing process.

It’s a great system to work to, because it means that our Super Spacer manufacturing team takes real ownership of the quality of product they are producing on a day-to-day basis. They get to follow the whole process from start to finish. This all-round team effort helps us to deliver the best products to our customers so that they can guarantee top-quality insulated glass units for their customers, every time.

Edgetech Innovation

While my role mostly involves looking inwardly at the organisation I am also responsible for looking to the future through product development and innovation. TruPlas, our thermoplastic rigid spacer bar was developed here in the UK. Super Spacer Alpha was also reverse engineered by the UK team and achieves our best performing thermal conductivity value at 0.13 W/mK.

I think it’s great that Edgetech invests year-on-year to make our products even better to help customers improve their offering also.

A Day in the Life of John

Although there’s never a typical day as a Works Manager, when I first get in I always start with a walk around the factory to talk to the team and see what’s going on.

There are 40 dedicated members in the team including five people that work closely with me to make sure the whole factory runs smoothly.

Then every morning at 9 we have a review meeting so we all know what’s going on, why it’s going on and how we can make it better. And after that the fun begins…!