NAA Business Excellence Programme Update
Since the Mentoring and Technical support competition was launched just 3 months ago, 18 projects have been approved, with a total project value of £265,000. There are a further 9 projects in the pipeline, with a total value of £224k, and only 5 slots for potential member companies remain
Firstly, on behalf of the NAA’s Business Excellence Team, I would like to wish you all the best for the New Year. We hope that it will be fruitful for you all.
Five Slots Remaining
I am happy to say that the interest in the Business Excellence programme has been extremely high and to date we have 50 members, from the original target of 55. So, if you are not a member and would like to know more about the programme, then I would be more than happy to meet and explain the benefits, whilst there are still slots available. It is free to become a member and the services are either free or subsidised and hopefully there is something for all companies.
New companies which joined in December are:
· Promote Design and Marketing Limited
· International Automotive Components Group Ltd
· HP Chemie Pelzer
· General Motors
· Morson
· NGF
Since the Mentoring and Technical support competition was launched just 3 months ago, 18 projects have been approved, with a total project value of £265,000. The project provides a maximum subsidy of 35%, up to £10,000. Total projects in the pipeline consist of a further 9 projects, with a total value of £224k. So, the total value of projects is £489k. The monies are being allocated very quickly and funds are likely to be allocated around April/May 2012. If you would like to know more about the support competition, the types of projects that we subsidise and the process, then please get in touch.
There are 7 new projects commissioned this month, which consist of ‘Project Management of a new product introduction’ and 6 international market studies (mostly in relation to Auto Expo 2012, New Delhi).
Networking Meeting
The next Business Excellence Networking meeting will be held at Morson, Trafford Park at 2pm, Thursday 16 February 2012. Please put this date in your diaries. The meeting will focus on sharing best practice and networking. I will finalise the meeting’s theme in early January, for which I intend to provide a guest speaker and hopefully a couple of the projects supported will be in a position to share progress. My current thoughts are that this meeting will focus on lean and adapting for change, but please let me know what themes you would like to see covered in the meetings in priority order. We can discuss these at the meeting and plan the themes to be covered in future meetings.
AutoExpo 2012 – India
As reported in last month’s newsletter, the Business Excellence project is supporting and subsidising attendance of our trade mission to AutoExpo, Delhi, India (6-11 Jan 2012), for members. The programme has paid for the stand space and is subsidising local market studies. The NAA is working in partnership with SMMT and UKTI and remains the only organisation taking a regional delegation, for which we are proud.
Our delegation includes the following North West companies:
· Performance Springs Ltd
· Current Care Ltd
· Scorpion Automotive Ltd
· Hylomar Ltd
· Jaguar Land Rover
I will provide feedback from the exhibition in next month’s newsletter.
Future Exhibitions
In September 2012 we will be attending two exhibitions.
· Cenex Low Carbon Vehicle – 5 and 6 September 2012 (venue yet to be confirmed)
· Automechanika, Frankfurt, Germany – 11 to 16 September 2012
Members of the Business Excellence Programme are offered a package of support, whereby we will heavily subsidise the cost of the stand and support delegates at the exhibitions.
If you are interested, please send me an expression of interest. If you are attending other exhibitions, please contact me, as I may also be able to assist. Please note that interest in Automechanika is particularly high, so if you wish to attend, then please let me know before the end of February (slots are limited).
Contact Me
If you are interested in finding out more about joining the Business Excellence Programme and any of the above, then please contact me. My email and telephone numbers are as follows:m.andrews@nwautoalliance.com, telephone 0151 486 4986 (general) or 07870 812214 (direct mobile).
I look forward to hearing from you.
All the best
Martin
Dr Martin Andrews
Northwest Automotive Alliance
