Chapter 24 

Chapter 24

Work 2 – Life at the Top   1997 – 2008

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - career, colleagues and bosses

Remember ‘Moving On Up?’  Part One of the trilogy that spans 37 years at the same workplace.

That section wrapped up at the point where, by hook or by crook, by good fortune or good favour, I’d found myself in charge of the factory and its 500 people.

Walking into the General Manager’s office in 1997 there were some priorities that required immediate attention:

Sort out the Senior Team.

Get the operational plan clear for the next 12 months and then deliver it.

Create the strategic plan and sell it to HQ.

Engage the workforce.

The management team needed shaking up.

To start with, the HR Manager, Malcolm Leslie, just wasn’t good enough.  Devoid of new ideas he usually took a lead from HQ and seemed happy to accept the status-quo.  He had little affinity with the workforce, leaving most of the detail and contact to his long-serving deputy, Peter Farmer.  He carried little respect at all levels but Ken, my predecessor, had avoided the problem and it wasn’t sustainable.

The issue was that, in most situations, you can’t just sack people.  At Main Board level, where it’s more akin to football management, it’s almost an accepted risk of the job if the ownership changes or the results aren’t good enough.  Departures are sudden, usually accompanied by a decent pay-off, and it’s usually not long before the same face has popped up again as a director in another organisation.  However, for the rest of us operating below this level, there are processes to follow.  Short of fraudulence, gross misconduct or disastrous incompetence, the only real way to take out someone at managerial level is to ‘restructure' their role either into something else, or completely out of existence.

I sounded out my new boss Bob Vernon, recently been promoted to Group Manufacturing Director of GDA, responsible now for all of the factories.  I thought we didn’t need two guys in managerial roles in HR so proposed eliminating the senior role and putting the Personnel Department under the overseeing wing of Tony Norman, the Financial Controller.

There are two general points to make here and both revolve around getting a grip on what’s going on.

Firstly you need to fully trust and rely on your Finance guy (girl).  They become your unofficial Number Two and the person you turn to for explanation, guidance, opinion, data, figures and excuses.  Inevitably, they have the handle on factory performance and, equally inevitably, the position usually becomes involved in any corporate analysis of the site including sensitive topics such the performance of colleagues, outsourcing, or even closure.  It’s a bit like the relationship in a Mafia organisation between Il Capo (the Boss) and Il Consigliore (a close, trusted friend and confidant.  It’s the Mob's version of an elder statesman; an advisor and ‘right-hand-man’ to the boss in a Mafia crime family.)

Tony had been there six years longer than me and knew where any financial skeletons were buried. We formed a double-act for our end-of-month reporting or budget discussions with HQ and he became an invaluable sounding board for strategic and tactical thinking. Never displaying over-enthusiasm and sometimes quite blunt, he ensured I didn’t get too carried away, didn’t exaggerate a position, or indulge in any real bullshit.

Secondly you need a Personnel unit that does what it’s supposed to do: look after the mutual interests of the business and the workforce. This means being approachable, accessible and visible for everyone, and having an ear to what’s being talked about out in the factory and offices. Additionally it requires an in depth knowledge of employment law and company policies, combined with a sympathetic, respectful manner when required to enforce or enlighten.  Basic activities such as payroll, recruitment, training and welfare are taken as a given.

That’s it - nothing else.

Once our ‘Personnel' rebranded itself as 'Human Resources’ it becomes a slippery slope. The new name gives it away as the function starts to think it can behave differently, treating people as numbers to be measured and traded, rather than as individuals.  Retreating behind closed doors and aligning more with corporate HR strategies was not necessarily always in the immediate or best interests of the factory.  More on this later.

It needed a difficult series of conversations with Malcolm and I wasn’t comfortable.  I don’t think he (or anyone else) saw it coming but he didn’t put up any resistance.  Was this because he could recognise the inevitably of it?  Or because he just had no fire in his belly? The package on offer was okay and he left on garden-leave immediately.  I wondered if this gave the rest of the management team a jolt?

The next change was a different.  We’d recently had a costly quality problem in the market that would have probably been avoided if we’d enforced internal procedures properly. The Quality Manager, Keith Walker, a pleasant, likeable guy with high integrity, had just failed to recognise this particular problem and not acted quickly or strongly enough.  His credibility at an unsympathetic Group level was badly damaged and there were calls from HQ for a ‘head to roll.'

I actually didn’t think he was dynamic enough anyway for what I wanted, but he’d got loads of other useful attributes.  Luckily there was a central role recently created within the group for a supplier engineer that would enable him to play to his strengths and the inclusion of a car meant that the remuneration wasn’t much different.  It turned out to be a good move all round.  He did a good job in the central role before moving back to a factory position as Health and Safety Manager, which perfectly suited his skill set.  He’s still there now.

Update Oct 2022 - he retired in 2021 and I’m going for a walk with him, Tony and Patrick (we’ll meet him later) next week.

This gave me the chance to bring in a new Quality Manager.  Mark Haslam was an ambitious guy in his thirties from Peterborough who had been well apprenticed and groomed in sound factory methods and was happy to relocate his family.  He’s also still at the factory and did the speech at my retirement.

It didn’t end there.  Rob Plimbly was headhunted away to another organisation. He was good, effective in the factory, and well respected for a young guy, and I was a bit rattled to see him go as I had him down to spearhead changes on the shop floor.  This at least gave the chance to bring in more new blood from Peterborough in the form of Paul Norman, another guy in his thirties with a background in production.  He wasn’t experienced enough to get the whole production brief so I gave him the Assembly Shop and Steve Ball was appointed Primary Shop Manager.

Being jointly owned by GE meant that we had to adopt a number of their global processes, one of which was the Six Sigma methodology for continuous improvement.  Each site added a Six Sigma Champion to their senior management team.  I acquired Gary Osler, yet another ex-Peterborough thirty-something with industrial engineering experience who was looking for his next step up.  He relocated his family and, as I write, after spells in Creda, Russia and Turkey, he briefly managed the Yate site before taking early retirement!

So by Christmas 1997, for one reason or another, the management team was radically different. Only Tony the Finance Controller, and George Lines, a long-serving, experienced, reliable, albeit somewhat cynical character, currently looking after the Design role, remained from just six months earlier.  Patrick Downey, a thorough and competent engineer had moved into the Materials role having picked up sound supplier knowledge doing a couple of years supporting supplier performance.   From being a very mature management team we now had six guys in their thirties, three in their forties and only George in his early sixties.

But no women. There weren’t any ready.  However, one or two layers down the organisation some seeds were being sown.  We’d been recruiting graduates into project roles over the previous year and the girls were gaining confidence and credibility in their various fields.  Louise in Materials, Sharon in Engineering and Angie and Kerri in Six Sigma all had the potential for management within a few years.  I tried to mentor, encourage and promote their profile, but to be fair, they didn’t need a huge amount of help.  Over the next few years, these girls and one or two of their male graduate colleagues were hugely helpful as frontline troops, finding and driving efficiency projects across the site.

Note: One good project engineer graduate costs £30k after a year or two of bedding in and could usually and deliver solutions that might generate well in excess of that figure year after year.

One good material control graduate costs a bit less and can save many times this amount in inventory reduction, transport savings and avoiding supply problems. It’s not exclusive to graduates, but my general experience is that they bring an enthusiastic, open minded and energetic approach that pushes conventional boundaries.  The good ones easily multi-task and don’t wait to be told what to do.

Trying to tell our HR that you’ve got to reward the good ones properly and occasionally break some existing hierarchical pay levels is usually a battle.

Once the team members were in place I arranged for a team-building day and night in an attempt to kick-start the bonding process.  We paddled Canadian canoes down the Wye to Symonds Yat and then I split them into a couple of teams (ham sandwiches or chicken sandwiches) and set them off on foot, exploring the Valley and Yat Rock, looking for clues.  By the time we reached the rather cheap hotel for the night, most were exhausted so consequently the final bar bill wasn’t too excessive.

And so to strategy, tactics and the operational plan.

It’s pretty easy to write it down on flip charts: Quality; Cost-Efficiency; People.

I took the management team to a local hotel for a day and night where, in the days before smart phones, it was possible to hide away from the normal mini-crises and pestering, and focus ourselves on creating a multi-generation plan that we could sell to Bob.  He could then attempt to win backing for our approach from the Main Board.

Nothing clever.

Where did we want to get to, and by when?

How were we going to do it? 

What were the short-term steps that would lead to medium term progress and would roll on into long-term survival against increasingly large and competitive continental factories?

The best way to try and secure a future for the site was to turn us into a factory that could produce a million dryers a year, enabling efficiencies of scale, keeping the product competitively priced and generating profits that could be ploughed back into the factory and workforce.

But to do this we needed a new product design and new equipment to make it on and that would cost money; a lot of money.  Such large scale investment didn’t feature in the Group’s expenditure plans for at least the next two years so, in the meantime, we’d just have to do the best we could with what we’d got.  Bit of a scrap-heap challenge.  Even on a shoestring we had to demonstrate that, when our turn finally came, we were worthy of the investment, making it too hard for the Board to seriously contemplate moving our product and volume to a bigger site.  Boards of Directors usually make these decisions based on financial grounds with a bit of opinion thrown in.  A lot of this was in our own hands. 

All we could do financially at the time was keep the operating and quality costs down. On the other hand, keeping a positive view of the site would be helped by keeping the commercial teams happy with our supply and responsiveness.  Easier said than done as Sales and Marketing were never happy, often wanting something we couldn’t make fast enough, and usually used ‘factory unavailability’ as their excuse for missing targets.  It was equally crucial to avoid any bad PR that might arise if we had a big quality problem or any industrial unrest.

So back to Quality, Costs and People.

A number of factors were helping the Quality position.  Firstly, our products weren’t new: there hadn’t been any significant technical or aesthetic changes for over five years, so most issues had already been resolved.  Secondly, there had evolved a strong relationship between Design, Factory and Service which provided good data on any adverse trends, or the success of any fixes we’d implemented.  Thirdly, we had recently launched a massive quality improvement programme to take us to the next step and look for more marginal gains.  Called Six-Sigma, it was imposed on us from GE, the more dynamic force within the GE/GEC partnership and permeated every aspect of their global operation.

Note: Six-Sigma - a method of using statistical measurement and analytical tools to identify, solve and sustain solutions to problems or exploit opportunities to be more effective.  It was complicated and needed a decent understanding of stats’ to be able to run projects. 

GE solved this by a massive investment in talent and resource, combined with a reporting regime that required regular, detailed updates on project progress and payback.  For me this was good news, enabling us to legitimately take on a Six-Sigma Manager (known as a Champion or Master Black Belt) and three graduate Project Leaders (Black-Belts).  In addition, all managers and engineers were sent on three weeks of residential training and, assuming the exams were passed, became Green Belts who were also expected to be running at least one project as part of their day job.  Most of the project teams included some people from the shop floor, helping with practical no-nonsense ideas and observations, but equally forming a back door method to communicate with the workforce.  Consequently, we had dozens of projects underway; some were excellent, some we’d have done anyway, and some were a waste of effort.  It dominated a lot of what we did and it forced us faster along the route we needed to follow anyway, helping drive down the costs of both Quality and the Operation.

With a massive focus on improvement there was a danger we’d be distracted from our other objective.

Taking the people with us. 

It gets a bit woolly here, but essentially, we needed to improve our communication of messages, performance and goals, improve the working relationships between departments, and reward and recognise people more appropriately where necessary or whenever possible.  I went big-time on the comms, introducing quarterly stand-up briefings, monthly newsletters, and birthday meetings.  These invited anyone with a birthday that week to join me for a cuppa in my office and the chance to discuss anything they wanted.  Some declined; some came and stayed quiet; others were more vocal.  I can’t recall many declining the cake that was on offer.  Meanwhile I usually walked around the site most days and like to think I was pretty approachable and as open as possible when answering questions or responding to issues.

It wasn’t just me.  Some of the management team were also comfortable doing briefings and possessed a relaxed style in their approach to the workforce.  Consequently we began to soften the traditional 'us and them' relationship.

Six-Sigma was also helping erode inter-departmental barriers, as potential adversaries often found themselves on the same project teams.  I threw in a new approach and arranged a series of residential outdoor training trips for those at supervisory, team-leader level.  In those days, Tony and I pretty much controlled our discretionary spend and I managed to convince him to write a few cheques: not an easy task when he couldn’t easily measure the returns.  We usually used a third-party training provider based in the Forest of Dean but I also ran a couple of weekends in the Mendips for the junior managers under the ‘Adventure Zone’ banner with Chris W and Nibz (see another Chapter).  In my opinion, these helped with both the individual’s personal development and their relationships with colleagues, and the positive feedback was awesome.

The third strand of people-related challenges was around pay and recognition.  I now found myself in dialogue with our Union representatives on a regular basis.  Mike Campbell, the Works Convener for the TGWU, was the main union guy on site.  A ruddy-faced Scot with a strong accent, he was passionate, forceful, knowledgeable and experienced.  A veteran of the days before postal ballots, when votes could be taken using a show of hands, he was adept at dealing with his audience whenever there were mass-meetings in the warehouse or carpark.  He was supported by a Shop Steward called Henry Clements who was much more cerebral than emotional and they were a tough pair to negotiate with, regardless of whether it was pay awards, working hours or disciplinary appeals. Luckily for me, they were also realists and could recognise the boundary where ‘achievable’ crossed over into ‘no chance.’

The key fact that dominated all pay negotiations over the years was that, for various historical reasons, the pay rates at Yate were significantly lower than the other UK sites and we had far fewer perks (holiday allowances, wedding gifts, profit share etc).  This meant that whenever somebody at HQ considered closing us and moving the output elsewhere, the sums never added up.  As Management, we frequently used this argument, trying to persuade the Union not to surrender too much of our ace card, and they were sensible enough to grudgingly recognise the long-term job security implications.

I would rely on Peter Farmer, the Personnel Manager, to ensure we followed procedures and back me up whenever there were legal or Company policies in place, and invariably we’d eventually reach something approaching an agreement.  There then followed a little dance with the workforce:

Step One - Campbell would take the offer to the members, not recommending rejection but failing to endorse it.

Step Two - We’d brief the offer in detail to the workforce and then hold a ballot which was usually overwhelmingly rejected.

Step Three - We’d chuck in something else (maybe 0.5% or a bonus triggered by site performance).

Step Four - Campbell would recommend acceptance.

Step Five - We’d brief again, usually playing the ‘keep the site competitive' card, and ballot again. This time it would usually sneak through.  If it didn’t, repeat steps three and four once more and it definitely would.

The whole process might take a month or two but rarely needed the union district officials to get involved and never resulted in strikes or any significant overtime bans.  In contrast with the other sites, we managed to keep a lid on any industrial unrest.

Darth Vader.

It wasn’t all plain sailing but we were heading steadily in the right direction.  For me, however, there was a storm blowing in.  GDA wanted the Group to move forwards faster so unceremoniously booted out the old GEC MD and appointed a hard Scottish ‘change-agent’ in his place.  Within days, Eamon Bradley had earned a reputation as Darth Vader across the GDA Empire, and when he arrived for a first look at Planet Yate, he seemed to make an instant judgement that I wasn’t the type of commander he was looking for.  Straight after his initial tour of the factory and an introductory sermon to the senior managers, he confronted me in the office along with Bob Vernon.

‘What’s your problem?' he bluntly challenged me. To say I was stunned, caught completely off guard, was an understatement.

‘You seemed disengaged and unsupportive in the meeting when I was talking,’ he went on aggressively. 

He declared himself an expert at reading body language and claimed he’d picked up the wrong signals from me.  The reality was almost the opposite.  His plans to give more backing to the site, drive harder with Six-Sigma, and encourage anyone, especially females, with potential, seemed to me like good news for the site.

However, I couldn’t have been looking positive enough or making enough eye-contact and he’d jumped to his conclusion.

‘Flippin’ heck!'  Not the sort of first impression to make with the most powerful figure in my current career universe.  I blustered a reply, stating honestly that I was on board with his strategies, but the die had been cast.

(Interestingly, in seeking some personal feedback over the years, a few people have commented that I can inadvertently display some ‘switched-off’ signals and it’s something I’ve subsequently tried to guard against.)

Darth was on a mission to shake up the business and senior heads rolled across the Group.  Bob’s advice to me for future encounters was to push back with some of the good stuff we were doing and demonstrate, with examples, how our direction of travel was aligned with his goals.  The initial attempt was a disaster!  He’d requested a presentation from me and the senior team on our business plan, current performance and ongoing projects and told us to book a hotel for an evening meal, overnight stay and a presentation session the following morning.  This was a guy used to the best hotels, wines and whiskies and Bob agreed we should book the outrageously-priced Lucknam Park Hotel near Chippenham as the venue.

It was a few weeks too early for me.  I was surrounded by a new team and we’d had precious little time for bonding and understanding each other’s styles and characters and I’d have to trust that they’d give a decent account of themselves when it was their turn for scrutiny.  We thought we’d put together a good presentation but I’m sure whatever we’d done he’d have ripped into us - it was just his style to be destructive and provoke a reaction.  The basic feedback was that our targets and plans, despite representing a big step forward, weren’t ambitious or fast enough, but it was hard to pick it out from all the critical vitriol.

And there was a sub-plot.  We’d just taken on a hi-potential from Peterborough as the leader for a project on ‘Stable Operations,’ a manufacturing methodology that was being rolled out by GE across their global factories.  Angie Brankin had an important role but it was at a level in the structure below the senior team.  I knew Darth had met her at Peterborough and taken an interest in her career, and undoubtedly the fact she was young, blond and smart hadn’t done her any harm with a guy who apparently had something of a reputation.  I’d taken Bob’s view about whether Angie should be present, but on balance he suggested that her immediate boss, Gary Osler, should lead the ‘stable ops’ part, especially as some of the things we were intending to present were relatively confidential and not appropriate for her level.

Right call, but wrong call.  Darth went off on a major rant before we’d even sat down for the meal when he realised Angie wasn’t there, accusing me and the team of being out-of-date and sexist, which couldn’t be further from the truth. (One of our first actions had been to clear the site of pin-ups and girlie calendars.)  It was impossible to argue with him and Bob, who was present, just kept his mouth shut and let me take it for the team.  I got battered and needless to say the meal wasn’t much fun as we had to endure listening to his tales of his past achievements.  To cap it all, he didn’t even use his room, claiming he was going to stay with a ‘relative' who lived nearby, and would continue his assessment of us at the factory in the morning.  It was a crap night, and I half-expected to be out of a job the following day.

Presumably Bob came to my defence in the background because I was still there a day, a week, a month later and on subsequent visits to the factory, he could see we were at least making progress along the right paths.   These visits were tough mentally.  I knew I’d get drilled on the numbers; the team knew they’d get skewered on their functions; and any (male) others were liable to be mercilessly picked on during the factory tour or project presentations.

The worst visits would be unannounced and could be carnage.  I once received a phone call at home during Christmas shutdown week, when we only had a skeleton crew in on one line, telling me ’Mr Bradley has just driven through the gate.’  ‘Oh shit!’  I drove out to the factory knowing it wouldn’t have been looking its best, and briefly encountered him on his way out.  ‘Just passing by so thought I’d take a look. The noticeboard in the motor shop is out of date.  Have a good New Year.’  Quite civil by his standards.

Rarely did I get a compliment, but he did like my briefing format and told my fellow site managers to adopt something similar.  Usually I existed in a continual state of threat.  I didn’t even enjoy the annual Six-Sigma Conference held for all the Group management and Project Leaders at The Belfry, a swanky hotel near Birmingham that regularly hosted the Ryder Cup.  Late in the evening, as the beer and music started to flow, I received a message to say I needed to go to Peterborough HQ for 9.00 in the morning to explain to the HR Director why we were struggling to recruit enough temporary labour to meet the sudden increase in sales.  Great!  So I had to quit the fun early and try and sober up enough for a crack-of-dawn drive and tricky meeting where I would try not to shove the blame too obviously onto the hopeless sales forecasting by the commercial teams.  Luckily, the HR Director, who was also an arrogant git, didn’t want too much focus on the recruitment issues within his function, so backed me in his feedback to Darth that the problem wasn’t caused by the team at Yate.  It still didn’t stop him threatening to sack me if we didn’t get on top of things, but the moment passed and another month rolled by.

In fact, I was threatened with being fired on at least three occasions, and would emerge from meetings with the guy mentally drained.  He was a master at exploiting weaknesses and it’s not in my nature to argue back aggressively against someone a couple of tiers above me in the pecking order. I probably survived because Bob defended me in the background and the factory performance continued to be acceptable.

And then one morning in late 1999, I received a phone call from Bob. ‘Guess what?  Eamon’s on his way!  He’s off to run Jaguar’s North American operation!'

I breathed a long sigh of relief. ‘Hallelujah!’

Suddenly, the whole organisation felt able to lift its collective head above the parapets and survey the scene - the aftermath of what had felt like a battle.  I joined the few survivors as we picked over Darth’s legacy.  We were stronger, and his championing of six-sigma had made us both more efficient and step-changed the quality.  At Yate, he’d supported the development of the site and funded a new canteen, new conference rooms and relocation to a new modern office layout adjacent to the production lines.  His mission had been to accelerate change and improvement across the organisation, and it’s fair to say he succeeded, but he was a belligerent, arrogant bully.  It had been a tough period personally.  I was learning that the there’s nowhere to hide if you’re in the top job.  In addition to the accountability for performance, you have to field issues from all directions.  This was particularly true for requests or queries from the rest of the organisation.

‘Who should I speak to at Yate?’

'Pete Sheath’s in charge.  Call him.'

At home it was also full-on.  Sue handled everything with the boys until I managed to get home, and then we’d be off in different directions with them to various organised activities.  She might manage a game of tennis and I’d get out later for a run, but there wasn’t any down time.

We continued to be oblivious to what was happening in the music scene.  All I heard on the radio at the time were The Spice Girls, S-Club 7, and Robbie Williams.  Consequently, we never hooked up to Oasis, the Manics or Massive Attack, and tended to settle for the more relaxing sounds of The Beautiful South, Texas and Travis. Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia was happening outside our bubble, and even Forest’s relegation in 1999 didn’t cause more than a disappointed ripple in my overwhelmed consciousness.

Works Director 2000 - 2008.

The Commercial Director, Graham White, was appointed as Darth’s replacement as Group MD. Unlike his predecessor, he had no real manufacturing knowledge and therefore leant heavily on Bob, whose standing and influence on the Board consequently increased.  This was good news for me as our working relationship was strong and the Yate team performed better without the constant threat of sudden death-ray oblivion.  Bob also managed to persuade Graham to change my job title from General Manager to Works Director, correcting an anomaly that Darth had refused to deal with.  All the other factories were led by a ‘Director', but he wasn’t going to endorse me, about whom he’d made no secret of his reservations.

‘Bastard!’  Just because my style was so different to his approach!  He’d told Bob I wasn’t tough enough for the role, and was too vindictive to change his view despite the site’s decent performance.  To be honest, I’m never too bothered about job titles, but this was more an issue of principle.

We pushed on, but it was getting harder to find efficiency savings: the need for investment was growing. The problem was that GE were becoming disillusioned with their partner GEC, who had recently rebranded to become Marconi and were actively taking themselves into the high-tech and dot-com environment.  Appliance manufacture was no longer exciting, even if it generated a ready, regular source of cash, and rumours began to circulate that GDA was up for sale.  Bob confirmed this confidentially to me the day after the Board Meeting in September 2001.  These meetings were rotated around the sites and it was Yate’s turn on the 11th.  They never finished it because I felt obliged to interrupt them in mid-afternoon as events in New York unfolded.  Stunned like everybody else, they aborted the meeting and sped off home.

So the uncertainty began again.  Who would be the new owners?  Would they need a dryer factory?  Tony and I provided stacks of financial and performance data, and Bob and I gave guided tours to the Turks from Arcelik (Beko), the Germans from Bosch and the Italians from Merloni (Ariston-Indesit).  Eventually a deal was struck and GDA was absorbed into the growing Italian appliance empire of Vitorrio Merloni and his family.  How would they deal with the acquisition, a huge foothold in the lucrative UK market and a doubling in size of their organisation?

The answer typified their approach to everything: confidently, chaotically and enthusiastically.  It was a completely different style, contrasting with the cautious, careful methods of the previous owners, and it was soon clear that they weren’t going to listen to any alternative ways of operating.  Driven by their success and expansion over the previous decade, they passionately believed they had the answers and the skills to become the largest appliance business in Europe.  If you didn’t commit to the same journey quickly you’d find yourself jettisoned overboard and replaced, usually by an Italian from their well-stocked pool of talented and ambitious junior managers.

Graham White and most of the Board faced up to the inevitable and made honourable exits.  Bob managed to tune into the Italians wavelength and quickly formed important relationships with the new hierarchy and became something of a go-to person for the new MD, a charismatic business leader called Marco Milani.  For the moment, other levels of management were left in place as they properly assessed what they’d acquired, but each function was scrutinised constantly by a senior project manager to drive the ‘Merlonisation’ of the UK operation.  New systems, new reporting structures, new KPI’s and new business processes, all with a common theme that gave the Centre increased control.  There was no point resisting.  Tony and I surrendered some independence in the interests of survival and set about trying to forge productive relationships with our new Italian colleagues.  We were whisked off for indoctrination to the HQ in Fabriano near Ancona in the Marche region of Italy, and to Milan where in fairness they tried hard to make us feel welcome and part of their vision.

A month or two later I was in a luxury hotel by Lago di Maggiore, joining their entire senior management from around Europe for several days of briefings, target settings and networking.  It was a sign of a confident, ambitious and profitable organisation that it was prepared to spend a huge amount on rewarding, wining, dining and bonding several hundred of its key people.  Okay so we had to work hard preparing our three-year plan as part this process so it could feed into the bigger strategic picture, but the plus side was the top guys shared openly the path they were intending to follow.  This jamboree was an annual feature and I enjoyed future events in places like Venice, Milan and Turin before tightening economics forced a more conservative approach.

In the UK we were flooded with Italians.  It was impressive how the organisation had such a reservoir of talent, all speaking strong English, all happy to do their two year stint as ex-pats and all bringing their national characteristics with them.  We started to learn Italian, coffee machines appeared in offices everywhere, mobile phones were permanently in use, meetings dragged on forever with lots of arm-waving and passionate arguments and the chance of sticking to an agenda was zero.  No-one ever accepted blame, especially the Italian women who could rant at each other for minutes on end, and all tricky decisions were routinely channelled upwards for someone senior to take the responsibility.  And yet this passionate chaos worked: decisions were made quickly and things got done.

The challenge for us at Yate was to persuade them that our factory was the place to build the next generation of dryers, rather than absorbing our operation into one of their other sites, or open a new plant in Eastern Europe.  In the spring of 2003, with the support of the Marketing Manager, I organised a two day event at a hotel in Ross-on-Wye with the Design, Marketing and Manufacturing teams to spec out the framework for the product development and the associated manufacturing requirements to enable us to capture and supply a million dryers a year into the European market.  After a day on and around the river, everyone got their heads down and, hopefully motivated by an Everest mountaineer evening speaker, the groundwork was done the following day.  A month later, we gathered again at a hotel in the Midlands to refine the proposals and conclude with a costed pitch to Marco Milani and Remo Perugini, the Engineering Director.  It felt like the most important presentation I’d ever done, rather like the final of The Apprentice, though at least I felt that every one of the team in the room were supportive and prepared to jump in to help with the details if I foundered.

We passed the first hurdle.  We now had to stand our proposal up against the alternatives, and it was a nervous few months as Bob, Tony and I provided HQ with the nitty-gritty of our costs. Bottom line was that we were at least as cost-efficient as any of their western Europe factories, but the current lower labour rates in Eastern Europe would give a Polish factory an advantage. However, by the time the investment costs of a new facility were added to the transportation costs of shipping dryers back to Western Europe, particularly to the UK, this labour benefit would be cancelled out.  Add the harder-to-quantify benefit of our 'product knowledge’ and the practical numbers all pointed to us.  Would the political judgement be the same?  Some of the Italian factories were in need of volume and we were a bit concerned that a parochial decision would be made, especially as union and other influential Italian lobby groups (know who I mean?) were far stronger and very vocal.  It was a big weight off my shoulders when we eventually received the green light to proceed to the next stage.

Throughout the middle of 2003 we worked hard, preparing the detailed project case and the official capital appropriation, and in July I submitted our request for £12.9 million, supported by pages of documentation. It was a huge day for the factory when we received the go-ahead.  Not everyone on site was aware, but this news virtually guaranteed that there would continue to be a manufacturing facility in Yate for at least another decade.  So after breathing a massive sigh of relief, patting ourselves on the back, and sharing the news with the local media, we made a start.

And then things nearly hit the buffers…

Incredibly, we had a battle with the local council when trying to extend the operating hours license.  Much as I value controls that prevent big business wrecking the environment, all we were trying to do was allow freight movements during the evening to a site that had been operating in situ for decades, well before a housing estate had been allowed to be built on adjacent land.  I hosted several meetings with the council group, trying to get them to realise that 500 jobs were genuinely at stake but it was hard work trying to achieve a balance between the plight of Mr Smith, who was insisting on double-yellow lines outside his house to stop employees parking, or Mrs Jones, whose dog always started barking when it heard the sound of a trailer being backed up to the Distribution Bay.  In the end we coughed up a not insignificant sum to fund a new traffic light junction at the factory exit and Milani committed to replacing some of the rather attractive cherry trees that flanked the site and had died off in recent years.

Finally, it was all systems go and, with the launch date less than a year away, the pressure was on. The Design team based at Blythe Bridge had to pull their fingers out as the tooling for metal and plastic parts was on long-lead times. Conceptual drawings needed rapid translation into technical drawings and we needed to choose the toolmakers.  Similarly, the new equipment to automate the manufacture of large components needed specification and ordering.  I had limited experience in this area, but fortunately the Italians had some ‘experts’ and a well-established network of possible ‘Italian' suppliers.  Remo Perugini took myself and Neil Mannering on an Italian road trip, visiting the potential supplier candidates.  It was a memorable visit and provided an insight into how inter-connected and family-based the Italian world of business actually is.  Considering Remo was easily a few notches above Neil and me in the hierarchy, and could easily have fobbed us off onto one of his Italian underlings, he proved to be an excellent host and tour guide.  We stayed at his home; we went to his favourite restaurant; he sorted out my missing luggage which had been lost at Naples airport, and he introduced us to many of his key contacts.  Apart from being permanently on edge whenever he was driving, I developed a strong respect for his knowledge and personality.  He even tried to let us think we would make the decisions about who would win our custom, despite the reality being the consequence of a series of deals and trade-offs between long-established business partners and often-related families.

Orders for tools and equipment placed, we set to work modifying the layout of the factory. Assembly lines were reconfigured; large presses moved; stores relocated; distribution expanded, and overhead conveyors re-routed.  In addition, we needed extra power which required the main Yate road to be dug up for about three miles to enable us to tap into a meatier transformer.  It felt like living on a building site whilst still needing to produce our existing volumes.  This was project engineering in the raw and it needed experienced, competent engineers.  Luckily, in Neil’s team were two older guys who’d been around the block a few times and thrived on this sort of challenge.  Roger Goscombe and Brian Rawlins (coincidentally I’m now in the same tri-club as his son and grandson) worked hugely long hours to prepare the site for the arrival of the new equipment and were the unsung heroes.  All I did was keep them supplied with coffee and try to deal with any non-technical obstacles they encountered.

By June 2004 we were in installation mode with regular arrivals of juggernauts from Italy bearing the kit and huge lifting cranes to place it all in position.  It was quite a spectacle for the workforce and, as several teams of Italian technicians flew in for a few weeks to support our guys during the set-up, it suddenly became very real.  It wouldn’t be long before it was all handed over to us.

But first we had a big publicity launch to deal with.  HQ had decided that it would be great PR for the President, Vittorio himself, plus his entourage of board members, to visit the factory and cut the metaphorical ribbon.  Amidst much fanfare, local dignitaries, the MP and councillors were invited for an ‘Italian' buffet lunch and factory tour, and the BBC were there to report the event.  Several of us ended up being interviewed for the evening news and the morning Money Programme.  It went really well, particularly as a couple of the more vociferous types from the shop floor gave a big thumbs-up when the microphone and cameras came their way.

But it didn’t all go smoothly afterwards.

Firstly it was apparent that the drum bearing design was too ambitious and needed a quick re-tool after it proved unreliable during our prototype builds. Next the automatic drum assembly equipment ended up as a somewhat Heath-Robinson affair with an over-dependency on criss-crossing conveyors, sensors and very precise welding.  We never forgave manufacturer Corno-Marco for landing us with such a beast and it’s been the source of many sleepless nights over subsequent years. (16 years later we were still nursing it, shift by shift.)  And then the large plastic base moulding, made by RGE in the UK, and the condenser unit made by Onysan in Turkey, both leaked water where they shouldn’t.  Despite lots of wriggling by both the suppliers and the designers, a huge focus from Mark and the Quality team eventually helped us resolve these issues.  Meanwhile, of course, Marketing as usual had promised all their customers immediate availability of the new ranges, so as the dryer selling season kicked off in August, we had the commercial people beginning to jump up and down.  I spent a lot of time fielding customer requests and offering dates I hoped would be realistic.

The other challenge was the product cost.  We were smack-on with our factory-related labour and fixed overhead projections, but our colleagues in Purchasing were coming in over their predictions on a lot of the components and a few design compromises had added some additional costs.  Each month I’d join the Italian project-cost leader, a likeable young guy, Matteo Branchesi, in meetings with the top-brass to report on progress.  With Bob we’d try and figure out how positive we could be in our update presentations about our somewhat jerky progress towards the goal in order to try and avoid a major bollocking.

In late September 2004 we’d been at a big three-day conference in Turin and were scheduled to be back in the UK the following day for Milani’s monthly review of the status of his UK sites.  It was taking place at Kinmel Park, the North Wales washing machine plant, and this time he would be joined by the Group CEO, Andrea Guerra, so it was definitely going to be a grilling.  Matteo, Bob and I were booked on an Easy Jet flight to Manchester, but at the last minute Bob, Derek Tuite, my equivalent at Kinmel, and I were told to the head for the VIP lounge.  There was space on the company jet and we would be joining Marco, Andrea and a few other senior guys on the flight direct to Chester airport.  Expecting a mid-air interrogation, it was a pleasant surprise to find ourselves enjoying a taste of luxury and the benefits of swift passport control at both ends.  I felt sorry for Derek.  He’d asked his HR team to arrange a pick-up from Chester to take us all to the hotel for the night, but the message had failed to allow for the hour time difference. There wasn’t much more than a Portakabin at Chester airport for these Italian directors to wait in, and when the vehicles finally appeared it was a pair of tatty minibuses rather than the limos they were accustomed to.  Bob and Derek got it in the neck and I suspected they were in for a super-hard review in the morning.   Fortunately Matteo, who’d travelled with EasyJet, and I managed to bluster our way through our slot and convince them costs were under control.

It was desperately hard work for the next few years as we bedded in the new designs and equipment and tried to resolve the quality issues associated with new product launches. Customers liked the styles and we were competitively-priced so our volume and market shares were increasing in the UK and Europe.  In 2006, we nearly made it to a million dryers in a year, only applying the brakes at 983,000 in December as it became clear that sales in the first quarter 2007 were not likely to be as buoyant as originally forecast.

Across the other UK sites it had been even more difficult.  Merloni (now rebranded as Indesit as the founder Vittorio and his family took more of a back seat) decided that the Peterborough refrigeration and Blythe Bridge cooker factories were never going to be competitive or compliant enough and announced plans to close them down.  These were big steps to take as they were seen as the bedrocks of the UK appliance industry, but their reluctance to really embrace an Italian style of operation didn’t win them any friends at HQ, and their failure to really address their higher cost base gave the Italians the excuse they needed to ship the work to their other plants in Poland and Turkey.

The man brought in as the Works Director of these plants with a brief to sort them out or close them down was Carlos Ramos.  It became clear almost immediately that he was Bob’s successor-in-waiting.  We knew Bob was ready to get out and retire, having managed the transition from GDA to Merloni, and helped secure the future of Yate and, so he hoped, Kinmel Park, and had done all he could to defend a hopeless position with the other two.  With little fanfare, Bob escaped to an earlier retirement and suddenly I was reporting to Carlos, the tornado that replaced him.

Bob Vernon   Score  8/10.

A down-to-earth engineer with few frills, he managed to stay on the right side of various MDs and build relationships with other Board members, particularly in the commercial teams.  Always with a view on things, he’d confidently use his gift-of-the-gab to persuade the decision makers to support his decisions and recommendations, and came close to being indispensable during the GDA era and early years with Merloni.  He demonstrated a massive commitment compared to my previous bosses, working long hours trying to manage the four factories.  A particular friend to the Yate factory, he pushed hard for our investment plans and was very supportive of me as I grew into the role (apart from once leaving me to dangle during an Eamon ‘Darth’ Bradley rant).  With a Midlands background and a few common interests, he was companionable, though self-centred and most conversations ended up being about him.

I lost track of time as we fought our way upward.  The markets across Europe were growing, and volumes and range variety increased to match this demand.  The automatic drum line was a nightmare, proving hard to hold tolerances and needing 24 hour nursing.  Often we’d be running close to capacity so a breakdown would become a threat to the assembly lines within just a few hours, and then we’d be resigned to a hand-to-mouth, fingers-crossed existence until the weekend when stocks could be replenished.  Regularly, I’d receive a call during the night to tell me of a problem.  And it wasn’t just the drums: hardly a week passed without an issue with a supplier or a tool that would require my full attention or intervention.  It felt like I was on call 24 hours a day, though looking back there were a few lighter moments.

I received call in the middle of the night from Keith Walker the H&S manager.  ‘Pete! I’m in the Press Shop and we’ve got a problem with the night shift.  People are passing out, some are dizzy or sick, and I’ve just sent a couple of them off in an ambulance. There must be some contamination in the ventilation or water systems. We might need to inform Environmental and Health authorities first thing and get hold of HQ to deal with the PR.’

I muttered a drowsy ‘On my way,’ and headed in.  By the time I arrived, the picture was becoming clear and the suspected culprit, or what was left of it, was in the office.  On a plate.  Some dozy idiot had brought in a birthday cake absolutely laced with cannabis and shared it with his fellows during a break.  It must have been strong stuff as it really wiped out some of them, though luckily no-one suffered more than a bad head and a scare.

Part of the problem in the early days was that we didn’t have enough technicians with any sort of experience in new digital technologies.  Our old equipment was largely mechanical, so our guys were experts with spanners, hammers, valves, cylinders etc.  The new stuff was automatic and digital, so they needed to understand software programmes and electronics.  Some were reluctant to learn and our best guy wasn’t the most committed.  For a while he had us over a barrel whenever we had a breakdown, and I shudder to think back on how much overtime he manipulated.

Luckily, the team held together and we slowly picked off the biggest problems, although there were a few scares along the way.  Driving up the M5 to Birmingham one Friday evening with Sue and the boys to watch an Indoor Athletics Grand Prix, I took a call from Carlos who had just been asked to respond to a massive complaint in France.  Our biggest customer, the supermarket chain Conforama, was unhappy with the quality of some of the dryer doors on their Indesit range.  Essentially the paint was peeling off in one corner, exposing a tiny amount of the bare metal and clearly, in the worst cases becoming unsightly and prone to rusting.  The complaint had escalated rapidly to HQ as Conforama refused to sell this range of models, and to blow the issue up further, the European Quality Director at Merloni immediately quarantined all 8,000 dryers of this type in our European warehouses.  Carlos, relatively new in the role, had been told to get it fixed immediately and wanted answers.

Note:

What was the cause?

The door tool had been made to a 3-stage, rather than 4-stage, design and was trying to do more pressing and folding of a blank piece of metal than was desirable. The result of this cost-cutting measure was it was difficult to guarantee the paint coverage and adhesion in one corner.

Why hadn’t it been fixed?

We’d flagged up this issue, that the tooling was on its limit, and HQ hadn’t been prepared to spend another €100k, so we’d been trying to manage it by extra painting and visual checking in the factory.  UK Quality had approved a minimum standard that we needed to adhere to.

How had these dryers reached France?

Well, clearly some had not been identified in the factory, and it seemed that some of our inspection processes had slipped.  Not every shift had been as vigorous in applying the standards.  Okay, it wasn’t easy to spot a door panel that might peel in a corner when 1000 panels go by every four hours, but we had sampling rules in place that should have protected us.  In most cases it was only a marginal cosmetic blemish, but once a top customer has their teeth into an issue, they can’t be shaken loose.

I didn’t see much of the athletics that night as we jumped to try and limit the damage.  Mark agreed to go to France on the Monday and arranged a team to rework the quarantined dryers as quickly as possible.  In the factory, we endeavoured to tighten further our processes and prepared for the inevitable visits from the HQ quality enforcement teams.  For the next few months, Mark and the quality and production teams were under intense pressure as we tried to achieve zero-defects, with processes and tools not up to the job.  It wouldn’t have surprised me if in a knee-jerk reaction, someone at HQ hadn’t demanded a scape-goat head or two to roll, and Mark and I were the obvious candidates.  The fact that we’d previously alerted the business to the issue probably saved us, and by the time Carlos had had chance to practically assess the background and current situation, it was clear that the problem should be shared by a whole number of functions.

Carlos bluntly told the Board we must have a stage-four tool and a year later we took delivery. Phew…

He pushed us, relentlessly. 

The first phone call would happen daily, without fail, around 7am.

‘How were the Afternoon and Night Shifts?  Any problems?   What’s your action plan?   Can I help?’

He’d also expect a wrap-up call before I left for home.  It didn’t matter if it was 6pm, 7pm or 8pm; he was always available and would call me if I’d not checked-out.

A weekly routine was a drill down into our weekly numbers with the senior team.  Finances, efficiencies, quality, headcount, service levels to the markets and so on.  We’d send him the performance report an hour or so before the video call, but even if it was only 5 minutes earlier, it felt like he often understood our situation better than we did ourselves.  He was a master of the silent pause, just long enough to allow someone to try and fill the gap and blurt out or bluster something they might not be capable of substantiating.

Monthly, he’d visit for a more in depth assessment, where we’d run through our latest issues, plans and ideas.  His memory was phenomenal and it just wasn’t possible to hoodwink him: if you didn’t know something, or hadn’t done it, you just had to be upfront about it.  He knew the Merloni-Indesit way of doing things; he had the contacts; he had the experience; he was an exceptional engineer and he’d lead the way if we were prepared to follow. I quickly recognised that we had to tuck in behind him as he championed layout changes, promoted new standards of housekeeping and equipment maintenance routines.  He had the better of me on most subjects, but at least when it came to materials management and supply chains he recognised I had the upper hand.  He also would often acknowledge that my style of management, with its emphasis on organisation, delegation, persuasion and encouragement, would usually eventually arrive at the same result as his more forthright approach.  The difference was, I appointed a team of managers capable of doing the things that I didn’t have the expertise in, whereas Carlos was capable of doing pretty well all of it himself and better than most of us to boot.  Inevitably, he would sometimes be frustrated that he had to work ‘through us,’ but I know he found the Yate people to be more responsive rather than awkward compared to the other UK sites.

At Group Level it was good to be part of his team.  Every few months he’d hold a meeting with all his site directors, ensuring that we shared best practices or people resources, and we’d often gather later for an evening meal.  Socially, he was good company, although it was usually his exploits that the conversations revolved around.  On one occasion he ‘smuggled' back through airport customs four massive sea bass, one for each of us, that he’d caught a couple of days earlier on a rare return trip to his native Portugal. 

Another memorable night followed my call, late in the afternoon, to alert him to a major problem with the drum line.  By mid-evening I was still on site, supporting (badgering) the engineering and maintenance teams when Carlos walked through the door, having driven down the two hours from the Creda site.  He remained there, effectively having taken charge, as we passed midnight.  At this point, I got a phone call from Security to say that Carlos’s wife was on site and being accompanied down to meet us.  I barely had the chance to warn him before she was at the door, demanding in a fiery Mediterranean way that he go to the hotel and get some sleep.  Apparently, he’d dropped her off saying he’d only be an hour or two and, whilst he was in the factory the next day, she could visit Bristol.  Dishing out instructions, he left us to it and I wasn’t far behind.  Needless to say he was in and working with the guys early the next morning.  Phenomenal!

There were some clashes.  For some reason he didn’t warm to Neil, the Engineering Manager’s, laid-back style, and felt he hadn’t the strength for the role going forwards.  Neil wasn’t enjoying the pressure much and opted to bail out and try something different.  Mark moved to Engineering and we took on Paulo Raquel, a Portuguese guy from the Merloni-Indesit stable who’d worked with Carlos before, as the new Quality Manager.  Another shift saw Paul Norman leave for a bigger role elsewhere, giving me the opportunity to recruit a new Manufacturing Manager.  Carlos and I both thought that Steve Simmonds, with his motor industry background and his performance at the interview, brimming with ideas, would be the right guy, and had even earmarked him as a possible replacement for me in the future.  It was mistake.  He never really gelled with the others, was incredibly opinionated and found it difficult to assimilate into our way of operating.  For a year we tried to mould each other, but in the end I had to accept that it wasn’t going to work and parted company with him.

Things were getting tougher for the business, and towards the end of the decade the spark had started to wane for Merloni.  The 2008/9 financial crises and the bursting of the dot-com bubble had hit economies, and markets everywhere were in recession.  Kinmel Park was next in the firing line as a series of factory rationalisations began.  Despite being an efficient, model factory, they were sold down the river by the Welsh Development Agency who pontificated for so long about an investment grant for the next generation washing machines that the business gave up waiting and shifted all the production to Poland.  Naturally, the politicians and bureaucrats took no accountability for the 800 lost jobs in a relatively deprived area of the country.  The surviving factories were subject to even tighter controls as the Finance and HR people at HQ demanded major belt-tightening, recruitment bans and a constant stream of budget and expenditure reviews.  It wasn’t much fun and an element of operating independence slowly was sucked away from Carlos, Tony and me and the site.

This had an indirect consequence for me because my strengths were around planning, operating and organising at both a site and commercial level.  As these activities were increasingly dictated by ‘the Centre,’ my role was evolving and now required an increasing emphasis on the engineering, manufacturing and quality aspects, which I wasn’t so strong on.  When central HR decided they would now allocate each site’s training budget, I had a massive argument with the UK HR Director about dilution of site accountabilities.  This isn’t usually a good tactic and I began to feel like maybe the time had come to let someone else take a go in the hot seat and began to mull over possible alternative directions.  Luckily she didn’t have time to bear any grudges because she left the business a month or so later.  I confided in Carlos that he might want to think about a new role for me in the next year or so and start the search for my successor.

Within the organisation, there weren’t too many options if I wanted to progress.  If I was prepared to move to Peterborough (no), I could have moved into more senior role in the Service arm of the business.  The alternative was a big role in Central Supply based in Italy.  It sounded interesting but it wasn’t really practical to move Sue and the boys (16 and 14) out there for a couple of years at that stage in our lives and with the uncertainty of what role would I eventually return to.  I thought about a complete break.  I’d like to think I’d have made a good teacher or college lecturer and briefly explored the options.  It didn’t seem an easy transition, with no guarantees and a spell without income, whilst retraining would be a challenge.

And then, suddenly, a decision crossroads was reached.  The Materials Manager I’d nurtured for a decade had moved six months earlier, following his wife who’d landed a bigger job in the north of England, and we’d taken on the guy from the recently closed Peterborough factory.  Wayne Hampton was experienced and respected and I was working well with him, so it was a surprise when auditors checking the Peterborough closure a year earlier discovered a series of dodgy anomalies in the accounts.  It seems Wayne had hidden some ‘mistakes' and several hundred thousand pounds of stock couldn’t be accounted for.  I wasn’t party to the details, but he had to go immediately and we suddenly had a vacancy for a Materials Manager.

I didn’t take long to consider the option, speaking with Sue that night. ‘What do you think if I gave up on the top job at Yate and dropped back into the team?  It’ll mean a slight pay cut but the stress should be less.  It’s probably time for a different challenge anyway.’  Sue was supportive as ever and I got the green light.  I spoke to Carlos the following week.

The team were surprised.  Not many people take a positive decision to drop back a notch on the career ladder, but I subsequently discovered that they valued my honest assessment of where I’d reached and what I wanted going forwards.  Plus, they were at least getting a Materials guy they could trust, although I’m sure they wondered how I’d rub along with whoever replaced me.

One mildly amusing tale associated with this move was the conversation I had with Tony, who’d asked me a couple of days after I’d told Carlos whether I thought he should apply for the Materials vacancy as he too was getting fed up with the level of HQ interference and fancied a change from Finance.  I sheepishly had to admit that the position was already filled and he’s never let me forget that I thwarted his ambitions!  Personally, I think he should thank me for saving him from a load of hassle and a largely thankless task.  

Images removed: Logos Creda, Hotpoint, Indesit, GE, Ariston.   Album covers: Spice Up Your Life (Spice Girls/Virgin)   Carry on Up the Charts (Beautiful South/Go Discs) Tony Blair ( Getty Images)