What installers want most at the moment is certainty . After so much disruption in the supply chain , they ’ re quite rightly looking for fabricators who won ’ t let them down .
There can ’ t be a single fabricator in the UK that hasn ’ t had to apologise to customers at some point over the past year because of extended lead times or dips in service levels . Certainly , at AluFold Direct , we faced sudden shortages in the summer of both aluminium and polyamide and we were acutely conscious of the impact that had on our customers . It was a humbling experience for a business like ours to fall short in terms of customer service , even for a short time , and it is one which we are determined never to have to repeat .
However , the idea that fabricators just have to survive this period , wait for supply levels to be restored and then resume normal service afterwards is fundamentally wide of the mark . If they genuinely want to remain a supplier of choice for installers , then fabricators have to be doing so much more than that .
At AluFold Direct , we ’ re nearing the end of a major investment in a new factory , new machinery , new software and a new management team , all designed to ensure that we can massively increase capacity while maintaining outstanding quality levels and market leading lead times . We ’ re determined to make buying and installing frames in aluminium as fast and accessible as buying in PVC-U .
We spent the pandemic transforming our entire operation so that we now have an industrial scale manufacturing facility , capable of delivering consistent
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, highly repeatable precision outputs in windows , doors and rooflights . There have been some growing pains of course , but we have a platform in place to build the certainty which installers demand . Unlike most aluminium fabricators who put multiple products down the same assembly lines and accept the limitations that puts on speed and volumes , we now have three dedicated high-speed lines , each with their own top of the range cutting and machining centres and fully automated four head crimpers . Each of these lines has huge capacity to grow as demand |
increases and our customers expand . The new software we introduced into the business over the past year is already improving the flow of information right the way from order to despatch . It gives us full traceability through all of the core business processes and means that the new management team have all the insight they need .
And , this new , expanded team has brought substantial new experience and expertise into AluFold Direct ensuring that we have the essential skills right across the business to guarantee best practice processes are being
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implemented throughout . When you ’ re looking to grow at the scale we are and to fundamentally improve the quality of customer experience , it ’ s not enough to rely on a small number of individuals – no matter how talented they might be .
Of course , the whole of the market is still , to a degree , constrained by limits on supply but we have acted more quickly and certainly more effectively than most fabricators to reach agreements which have made our supply chain substantially more robust .
Over the Summer , consultants McKinsey published an interesting report asking : ‘ What ’ s next for consumers , workers and companies in the post Covid-19 recovery ?’ One of the points it made was that it was mostly bigger businesses that took bold actions during the pandemic in the adoption
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of technology and in speeding up operational innovation . Unsurprisingly , these ‘ superstar ’ companies that invested most in R & D saw the gap between their profits and the rest of the market widen .
Interestingly , the report also pointed out that , if the actions of these ‘ superstar ’ companies spread widely amongst businesses of all sizes , then the disruption caused by the pandemic could actually offer a path to broadbased growth and higher productivity – potentially a 1 % increase in annual productivity right up until 2024 .
That ’ s as true for this industry as it is for any other . Those businesses that are best placed to move forward into the recovery are those that have prioritised growth rather than just survival .
www . alufolddirect . co . uk
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