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An Example of Bespoke Consultancy offered by Coventry University to a Medium size Business

THE COMPANY

Contechs Consulting Ltd was formed in 1997 to offer specialist design and engineering services to OEMs and their first/second tier suppliers
The company employs a senior management team of industry specialists and over 350 technical staff. The company had a GBP 20 million turnover in 2008. Contechs currently employs 375 staff in its three UK business locations in Basildon, Warwick and Poole.
With offices across the UK and Europe it has an in-house CAD and communications infrastructure that meets the quality standards of the world wide transportation industry.
The company Managing Director, Peter Jarvis, is a strong believer in personal and companywide transformational growth and in collaborating with Higher Education environments

THE CHALLENGE

Bespoke academic consultancy was needed as a part of an ongoing KTP engagement with the Art and Design Department
As the business grew into new areas there was a need to provide shared flexible consultancy to give advice on lean manufacturing and Material Requirement Planning
There was a need for quick flexible consultancy and access to resources
As the business grows there is an ongoing need to access quick and responsive techniques to respond to change

TYPICAL BENEFITS OF ACADEMIC CONSULTANCY

Specialism from academic field of expertise can be applied in business context
Academic consultancy is flexible enough to cover various areas of transformation in the business and produce ad-hoc advice is needed
Guidance to identify optimal solution based on benchmarking broad knowledge in industry field and untested business territories
With academic consultancy it is possible to take an unbiased view of what is best practice – something that private consultancy doesn’t offer.
The academic consultants visit regularly and if a KTP Is involved they offer free and regular supervision to the placement students

RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)

The impact of specialist Consultancy helped to eliminate waste throughout the procurement and manufacturing system; Improving the flow of parts & line balancing; overall Management & Purchasing efficiency, the effective introduction of new additional products in to production (with the same amount of resource), the reductions in overtime and improvement in delivery times.

Pete Jarvis, Managing Director of Contechs Ltd:

"The Consultancy provided by Coventry University is very wide reaching with the capacity to draw on a number of specialists with a mass of industrial experiance. Opposed to specialist independent Consultants that TYPICALLY do not possess such wide reaching services. However, the larger Professional Consultancy Houses that do have such services are very often too expensive and less efficient".

The results speak for themselves, the total ROI = 10.6:1 / Month, equating to a saving of £342K p/a.