Here at Saftronics we are committed to supporting young people in the engineering sector.

The company has welcomed its latest crop of apprentices, 3 of whom, (Kofi Taylor, Ethan Joyce and Robbie Whittles), have come straight from school whilst one (Christian Denton) has come from a previous place of employment that has since ceased trading, he is currently studying at the Print Works.

All four will spend 3-5 years gaining skills at the Saftronics headquarters in Leeds. Through the apprenticeship programme, they will receive hands-on experience on the shop floor (manufacturing items like our bespoke MCCs), in electrical design, software and tendering as well as receiving mentoring from experts across the business.

This real-world experience will be supplemented with a specialist industry accredited course at Bradford College that the apprentices will attend to learn all aspects of engineering.

Jonathan Robinson, Director said “Our apprenticeship programme is very important to us. It is something of personal interest to me as I too started at Saftronics many years ago as an apprentice as did many other of our senior employees. The apprentices will be guided through their studies and given the chance to put the theory they’re learning into practice at every available opportunity.

“We really recognise what young apprentices have to offer and are committed to investing in the engineering talent of the future.”

On the 11th September, the Manufacturing Growth Programme (MGP) is running its first Manufacturing Productivity workshop in the Leeds City Region on how to improve Lean processes.

Delivered in partnership with the Leeds City Region Growth Hub and hosted by MGP client, Saftronics Limited, the aim of the workshop is to provide all delegates with a good understanding of Lean Principles and how waste reduction will improve business performance and the customer experience.

At the end of the workshop, delegates will be able to explain the 5 Lean principles and the benefits of applying these to the business, understand the 7 production wastes and how to reduce them, run value added activities and waste management and be able to explain and demonstrate the massive benefits gained by the implementation of Lean.

This workshop offers practical group exercises which are informative and fully participative and will help delegates identify challenges and solutions to take back into day-to-day working.

At the end of this workshop, hosts Saftronics Limited will be providing a factory tour to showcase their products and their processes.

This workshop is part of the additional £11.8m funding MGP received to continuing delivering business support to SME manufacturing businesses in April 2019.

The Manufacturing Growth Programme will be delivering over 150 fully funded productivity workshops to manufacturing SMEs across England between August 2019 and September 2021. These sessions are open to all SME manufacturing businesses looking to improve their business performance with hands-on, practical solutions.

Manufacturing Productivity Workshops themes available;
• Lean Awareness
• Improving Layouts & 5S
• Value Stream Mapping
• Supply Chain – Inventory Management
• Problem Solving
• Quality, Cost & Delivery
• Change Management
• Vision & Strategy

These workshops offer practical solutions to implement into your employee’s role, encourage teamwork and collaboration and are a place to share real-life manufacturing experiences with likeminded business people and of course, are free of charge!

Each theme will be ran at least once in the 16 Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) regions the Manufacturing Growth Programme delivers in, ending in September 2021. A maximum of 2 delegates per company per workshop are permitted.

To find out more and to book places, visit www.manufacturinggrowthprogramme.co.uk/workshops or follow @mfggrowthp on twitter.

Saftronics are manufacturers and suppliers of Motor Control Centres, Control Panels and are Siemens Partners.