The visit was hosted by Neil Nicholson, Technical Manager, Fraser McGill, Maintenance Engineer and Craig Small, Reliability Engineer. Neil gave details on the worldwide locations of Michelin and their product range covering 68 manufacturing sites with a turnover of Euro 16.4 billion in 2008 producing 200 million tyres per annum with 12000 employees.
The Dundee factory employees 850 people, having taken on 150 (including 30 engineers) last year and has a capacity of 24,000 car tyres per day although demand is currently running at 22,500 per day. The site contains an apprentice training school with an intake of 15 apprentices per annum, including nine from other companies.
The factory operates on a cell manufacturing basis and is proud of its safety record of over 1,000 days with no lost time accidents.
Neil Nicholson’s Engineering Department is responsible for energy management, IT support, engineering stores, building and forklift maintenance, drawing office and management of an external engineering resource.
The factory tour covered the entire manufacturing process from raw material reception to final packing and shipment of 1,000 tyres per day. We saw an interesting juxtaposition of manually intensive and fully automated manufacturing processes in a remarkably clean environment considering the raw materials being handled in large volumes.
The 14 attendees were mainly IET members with a couple of non-members. Unfortunately the committee organised the meeting for the 10 April which was the schools Easter holiday and this had a significant effect on the attendance levels. None-the-less the visit was thoroughly enjoyed by those that attended and as a result the visitors were provided with a real in-depth tour of the facility that would not have been enjoyed had the number been greater.