Apprentice leads project saving company £29k per month
27 Oct 2020
Apprentice Emma Sisman has helped save her employer £29,000 per month as the second highest skilled person in her department heading up a waste reduction project that cut the cost of lost-in-production parts by 80 per cent.
She admits that when she joined employer Niftylift two years ago she had ‘little to no experience or knowledge’ of engineering and manufacturing.
“That shows the power the apprenticeship programme has in developing and progressing individuals,” said Sisman, who completed a three-year technical support apprenticeship and is now a first year degree apprentice employed by the Barnsley based company – one of the largest manufacturers of mobile elevating work platforms.
Sisman credits the blend of practical skills and knowledge gained during her University of Sheffield AMRC Training Centre apprenticeship.
“We achieved a reduction in lost-in-production parts cost by 80 per cent, saving the company on average £29,000 per month,” said Sisman.
Niftylift QA manager Martyn Gannon commented:
“She has taken on several projects which make an impact on the bottom line of the business. The most recent being the reduction of lost-in-production parts, reducing the cost from £39k per month to a current level of £8k per month.
“To enable this Emma had to organise investigative, collaborative cross-functional teams, root cause analysis, and designs of experiments to prove out theories and improvement initiatives.
He added the apprentice had also taken on the planning and organising of external training and development of the quality technicians, improving overall skill versatility of the Quality Assurance technicians from 55 per cent to 66 per cent.
Niftylift’s business objectives are to increase output and turnover by 40 per cent and Sisman had also improving audit and calibration systems adherence on site from 50 per cent to 95 per cent per year.
Nikki Jones, director of the AMRC Training Centre, said Emma is an apprenticeship champion and a credit to her employer. “Emma is a perfect example of how industry can harness the fresh-thinking, skills and new ideas apprentices bring into company and use those to help them innovate, drive productivity, become resilient, recover and regrow.”
