BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT JULY/AUGUST 2020
BOXING CLEVER
Family-run packaging manufacturer, Glossop Cartons,
was rapidly expanding, but its shopfloor processes were
struggling to catch up. Cue a complete re-think of the
way the factory operates
Based in Stockport, Glossop Cartons has
been manufacturing cartons, blister
packs and counter-top display cases for
over 30 years, under the stewardship
of joint-MD, Jackie Sidebottom-Every.
The company has grown from humble
beginnings into one of the leaders in its field,
counting a number of household names amongst
its ever-growing client base.
Jackie and her husband, Brian, founded the
company in their early 20s after Jackie’s father,
who worked as a sales rep for a large carton
manufacturer, saw a niche in the market for
a bespoke provider of high-quality products.
“It was the time of Margaret Thatcher’s push
towards entrepreneurship,” she says. “The
government even gave us a financial advisor to
look over our business plan. We got a loan of
£25,000 and started the business from there.”
After a rocky start, in which the bank
attempted to repossess the couple’s house and
Jackie’s father passing away in the same month
as he joined the business, Glossop Cartons soon
began to gather momentum. It wasn’t always a
speedy process, though. “A lot of our time was
spent plodding along, making cartons and not
worrying too much about anything else,” says
Jackie. “It was only as our children were getting
older that we started to look more at what we
could do with the business.”
As the new millennium dawned, so did a
new-found sense of urgency for Glossop Cartons.
Instead of relying on often-unreliable secondhand
machinery, the company started buying
Simon Boden
joined Glossop
Cartons earlier
this year
brand new, state-of-the-art
equipment, culminating in the
2008 purchase of a multimillion
pound printing press,
which helped the company
weather the storm of the
financial crisis of 2009-10.
It didn’t stop there, either:
2013 saw Glossop Cartons
become the first in the world
to take delivery of a Highcon
Euclid cutting machine,
something Jackie describes as
a “massive leap of faith – it was
brand new technology that was
largely untested.”
A need for guidance
Fast forward to December 2019,
and the company expanded
its premises by over 50% by
purchasing a neighbouring
building, taking production
space to almost 6,500m2. The
move has enabled Glossop to
streamline its operations –
something enhanced with the
recruitment of industry veteran
Simon Boden as the company’s
business improvement manager
earlier this year.
Explaining his role, Boden
says: “As the company has
grown to the stage it is now in
a relatively short space of time,
the first priority for me was
to go through the company’s
current procedures. From
there, I’ve looked to prioritise
projects that will help boost
the company’s bottom line,
whether that be through cost
reduction, waste reduction,
productivity, or efficiency
improvements.”
Also on the agenda was a
new ERP system, to replace the
outdated system that had been
in place for some time. Data
capture became key, to allow
the Glossop management to
measure process efficiencies.
“We’ve been collecting the data
for every single product that
goes through the production
area,” says Boden. In addition
to that, we've got shopfloor
data capture, which is analysing
data literally each second. This
now provides the business
with the data and that we can
analyse and effectively use in
decision-making. After all,
you can’t manage what you
can’t measure.”
The impact of this
way of working has been
revolutionary, and has taken
BY CHRIS BECK
50%
The company
expanded its factory
space in 2019
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