Yale has always been passionate about maintaining and building a UK manufacturing base and the company continues to make significant investments in automation at both its Willenhall and Cheltenham sites, allowing it to enhance already high standards of technical precision and bring product manufacturing back to the UK from overseas.
Steve Craddock, Engineering Manager at Yale Door and Window Solutions, comments: “There are multiple benefits to manufacturing our products in the UK and we’ve been working on numerous developments to create valuable floorspace for further automation, along with larger insourcing projects.
“Our Mantis one-piece keeps were originally sourced from China, but we’ve worked hard to bring the manufacturing of this product back to our historic centre of excellence in Willenhall. We now use a new bespoke assembly machine, optimising value-added riveting operations. By reducing international shipping transport, we have subsequently reduced CO2 emissions and the assembly operations at Willenhall are also powered by electricity from 100% renewable sources.”
Yale prides itself on close quality control measures. With both UK sites accredited to EN ISO 9001:2015 for quality management and ISO 14001 for environmental management systems, the sites will contribute to the rising quality standards in UK industry.
Paul Atkinson, Managing Director of Yale, comments: “There are clear benefits in manufacturing local where possible, not least of which supporting the local and UK economy; by maintaining and growing manufacturing at our Willenhall and Cheltenham sites we believe this will help contribute to the UK job market and those people in turn spend their ‘hard earned’ on doors and windows, keeping the cycle in the UK. In a similar vein, Yale is proud to be an official member of Made in Britain, which aims to bring together the entire British manufacturing community.
“Being closer to the customer and market means we can respond to customer requirements and fluctuations much quicker; we can offer bespoke supply chain solutions such as Kan Ban, line side delivery. We benefit from faster implementation of new variants such as our SensCheckTM compatible hardware. There are also research and development benefits for our customers when it comes to new products.”
As the leading name in home security, Yale also has the infrastructure in place within the UK to test door and window hardware to the most stringent and up-to-date industry standards, providing accurate data on the product’s performance, as well as offering endurance testing, static load testing and corrosion testing. The business has a corrosion test tank, six endurance rigs and a dedicated endurance rig for spring balance, a PAS24 window and door rig, along with a window lock endurance rig. It can also provide commercial window endurance and mock project simulation within its large-scale commercial test rig. This indicative testing provides customers with peace of mind that hardware has been tested with the utmost accuracy.
To learn more about Yale and its product range, visit www.yaledws.co.uk
