Plasma Tv Reliability

While gloom stalks CTV production in the UK, Sanyo's Suffolk plant this week celebrates 20 years in business by exclusively revealing to ERT Weekly plans for a plasma TV facility.

The mature 20 acre plant, formerly a Pye CTV production facility, will this year produce 500,000 CRT units from 14in portable to 32in widescreen models. It produces all of Sanyo's 250,000 + plus UK destined units--6% Of the total UK CTV market--and this year some 80% of the company's entire European distribution.

Impressive statistics indeed for the only CTV plant in the UK never to have received a government grant. According to Noel Salmon, vice-president of Sanyo Industries UK, this success is down to an equal commitment to people and process. While the future of the slick, near people-free plants of south Wales hangs in the balance, Sanyo's more old-school approach to manufacturing management will this year see the plant produce the full 2002 model range with plans under way to create a line for plasma TVs next year.

Of the 450 or so staff employed at the site, most have been there for at least a few years and many, Mr Salmon included, saw the opening ceremony as employees in 1982. The plant has incredibly low staff turnover and a life long development and training policy with almost 100% of managers starting from the factory floor.

Along with the bulging staff social events calendar, there is a community spirit flowing through the various buildings that stems from the once thriving fishing town. Although less than 1% of the town's population actually works for Sanyo Industries UK, the company's commitment to local suppliers generates thriving business throughout.

But while the d6cor, purchasing and HR strategies appear to have changed little since 1982, the manufacturing technology is right up to date. Behind the low-tech reception with its teak Formica-topped tables, the production lines employ the latest surface mount machines and high tech QA and testing facilities.

Mr Salmon describes achieving ISO 9002 in 1994 as relatively easy, as many of the parameters for this quality standard were already being implemented before they decided to go for accreditation.

The correlation between ISO 9002 at the factory and product reliability in the field is well documented, and Sanyo UK's communications manager Mark Ebsworth adds: "Independent retailers like Sanyo TVs for a number of reasons but a main one is their reliability--they simply don't come back."

The machinery has been specified for flexible production and any line can be turned to a different model in a matter of hours. This allows production runs down to as low as 100 units to respond quickly to market demand, but Mr Salmon admits the trade off is a simple reduction in economies of scale.

Like the quality accreditation, the factory was well on its way to becoming the greenest CTV plant in the UK long before it achieved ISO 14001 Environmental Management in 1996.

Cabinets are coloured using a 100% water-based paint spraying process with far lower emissions than solvent based systems. Similarly, extracted process gasses are used for heating the factory before being scrubbed and returned into the atmosphere. Polystyrene and cardboard packaging materials from incoming components are fully recycled and even old vending cups are transformed into Sanyo branded plastic rulers that are distributed to local schools.

In the UK, recycling TVs themselves is likely to become an issue in the next few years. Sanyo Japan is already recycling old CRTs in the Far East and is currently investigating ways of implementing the technology over here.

This could easily see Lowestoft become the UK's first TV recycling facility and Mr Salmon is not ruling out offering this service commercially to other UK manufacturers.

Tony Yonenaga, Sanyo Industries UK's managing director, has recently returned from Japan confident of the long-term survival and indeed growth of the UK facility. He describes a number of development programmes starting this autumn including the plasma line, CTV recycling facilities and IDTV production when the UK DTTV market stabilises.

These are troubled times for many sectors of UK manufacturing but Sanyo's Lowestoft CTV plant is weathering the storm and proving there is still a future for made-in-Britain products.

COPYRIGHT 2002 DMG World Media Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group

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