Case Studies
Jaguar is a British Icon and needs little introduction as a company. In 1989 Jaguar became part of the Ford Motor Group. Ford is a global company who relies on suppliers and business partners to meet their customer's needs. Since the 1980's Clearwater has been one of those preferred business partners.
Our association with the painting facility in Castle Bromwich has spanned for almost 20 years. Clearwater's involvement has been the delivery of bespoke service packages to ensure the reliable production of Ultrafiltrate, an essential part of the painting process.
However in the late 1990's this long-standing relationship with the Castle Bromwich site came to an end due to installation of a new paint shop facility. This installation included a new Ultrafiltration system, which was claimed, could be serviced in-house. Clearwater's absence was principally driven by a short short-term cost saving arising from this new installation. However this new system soon became unreliable, at which point Clearwater were requested to re-establish their long-standing relationship to give Jaguar the peace of mind they had always previously enjoyed.
To Date
Clearwater continues to service the facility at Castle Bromwich and have recently installed an enhanced cleaning mechanism to ensure the continued delivery of Ultrafiltrate. This system along with our relationship will continue to evolve to ensure that Jaguar continuously produces high quality finishes long into the future.
This reliance on trusted partners allows Jaguar Cars to concentrate on it's core business of making premium luxury cars and Clearwater to concentrate on one of it's core competences, the production of Ultrafiltrate.
Alan Brown, Paint Shop Maintenance Manager commented: "We have always been able to rely on Clearwater's ability to deliver. Their understanding of our systems here has been built up over many years. Long term relationships like these greatly enhance our ability to deliver a quality product to our customers."
GKN is a focused automotive and aerospace engineering group whose major busineses have global market and technology leadership. OffHighway Systems serves industries and applications engaged in moving and cultivating the Earth's surface; operations are headquartered in Telford, UK.
Clearwater's relationship with the Telford site has spanned over 15 years.
In June 2000 the engineers in Telford's paint shop facility noticed that the film builds on their components were changing, they were keen to fully understand the reduction in performance.
After several unsuccessful diagnoses the OEM on site suggested Clearwater may be able to help.
The solution
The call was answered on a Wednesday morning where the head of maintenance pointed out that the situation should be remedied sooner rather than later to satisfy the strict quality measures on site. Clearwater quickly redirected their resources to solve the problem. It was found that the existing Anolyte/Anode system had degraded with age. Once a full survey of the system had been carried out, the Clearwater team spent the next few days contacting suppliers to locate the various components necessary to bring the system back to its original peak performance. The plant was handed to Clearwater on the Friday afternoon of that week. Working over the weekend of our engineers and trading partners totally refurbished this essential system and handed the plant back on the Sunday afternoon fully commissioned. This fast response and ability to work out of production hours allowed GKN's production to be completely unaffected.
To help understand this process in real time and allow the early prediction of potential decline, Clearwater also recommended that a monitoring system be installed. This recommendation was taken on board and this system is now comprehensively monitored 24 hours a day. This action allows GKN the ability to monitor and prevent any undue reduction in system capability and demonstrates Clearwater's commitment towards continuous improvement of process.
When trials were performed on the Sunday afternoon the Head of Maintenance, Tony Merrington commented: "I can't remember the last time we had a film build as good as we're getting."
Suffice to say Clearwater continue to be a business partner GKN can rely on.