Issue link: https://htpgraphics.uberflip.com/i/464860
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW Highlighting best practice 44 | AMBIC EQUIPMENT development staff but also involves the sales and marketing staff, the tool makers and the production and the accounts personnel. All these team members bring their expertise to the table to ensure that relevant, reliable and competitive products are developed to meet tangible current and future market needs. Customer focus A close dialogue with Ambic's customers is also a pivotal feature of its business strategy. Keeping in close contact with the market by exhibiting at trade fairs around the world, for example, and meeting regularly with customers to anticipate their current and future market needs helps to provide valuable insight to inform its product-development strategy. It also helps with supply-chain alignment, ensuring that the focus is not just on product quality but also on service quality, so that Ambic's total product offering is aligned with customers' needs – so that it can be sure to deliver 'in full, on time' every time. Productivity improvement Centralising and controlling all the functions of the business in Witney has been seen as key to enabling the company to remain flexible and reactive to customer needs. In international terms, however, Witney is a relatively expensive production site, particularly in terms of labour cost. Rather than relocate assembly operations to a low labour cost location, which would compromise key aspects of its business model, Ambic has opted to invest in automation in order to engineer labour cost out of the manufacturing process, and so remain cost competitive. For example, the mould shop is now equipped with fully automatic mould tools and state-of-the-art injection- moulding machines, which are able to operate 24/7 within the cost structure of a single shift operation. Combined with product innovation, this has proven to be a winning formula for meeting customers' needs and growing market share. Investment Innovation, growth and productivity improvement all require investment and funding, a major problem faced in recent times in the UK by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are dependent on scarce, and often expensive, loan capital from banks. Since 2005, Ambic has been part of a public company, Skellerup Holdings, which is quoted on the New Zealand stock exchange. Being part of a public company brings the considerable benefit of ready access to funding for investment in the business – provided a convincing business case can be made for the investment – alongside the considerable challenges for an SME of all the various corporate governance requirements of public company ownership. This gives a dimension of strategic stretch to the capabilities of the organisation, and helps to drive its performance. the focus is not just on product quality but also on service quality " " Automated production in Ambic's mould shop