Customer Requirement

Electronic Throttle Controllers (ETC’s) are dedicated to usually one specific vehicle.

The original supplier of ETC's to a leading automotive brand went into receivership, leaving the customer without five service part numbers and no alternative supplier. The customers technical engineer was aware of  TMP Manufacturing broad range of skills from a previous insolvency project, and approached us to see if they could take over the production cell and put the service parts back into production.

TMP Manufacturing solution

We liaised with the administrator and purchased the production assembly cell set-up (which occupied a floor space of approximately 15²M). The cell was partially disassembled by us before being transported and reassembled at our premises. In conjunction with the customers technical engineer we sourced a new sub-supplier to take over the production of all the required mouldings for the assemblies. We also set up supply arrangements with the various bought-in components, all from the original sources.

The cell was back in production just a few weeks later producing all five part numbers. A former employee of the original supplier was employed by us to ensure no errors were made, during our early production runs.

After two years of maintaining the assembly cell, it was decided to reduce the cell footprint by around 75% to save floor space. The original assembly cell was designed around three operators and now only one was required to keep up with service volumes. Following the build-up of some buffer stocks, this cell redesign was undertaken by in-house teams. The redesigned cell was back in operation within 2 weeks.

Shortly after the assembly cell redesign, a key sub-supplier, who made the electronic sensors, announced they were ceasing production and would only manufacture one final batch of sensors. As the all-time-requirement was still well in excess of 100,000 sensors, we took over responsibility for the sensor assembly, finding and working with a new supplier in this area.

Two years later the annual service demand had fallen by over 60%.  Consequently TMP Manufacturing redesigned and manufactured a manual assembly cell, with only 1²M floor space. This assembly cell still currently in use.