NEWS

Competitiveness is rarely about one big decision or action. It's the cumulative effect of working smarter. Improving a process here, removing a bottleneck there, bringing in the right technology at the right moment. On its own, each change looks small. Cumulatively, they all add up and help change what a business is capable of.

My job is to go into a business, visibly capture how the work actually flows, and identify where time is being lost. Not in theory, but on the floor, stage by stage. Most teams already sense where the problems are. What they need is someone to show them clearly, and the confidence to take action.

This year I worked with Probe Industries, a respected Northumberland manufacturer of rotary atomiser systems and liquid odour control products, in business for thirty years. Turnover had risen 18% to £1.1 million, with new contracts in the Far East and more projected. Growth was good news, but it was creating pressure. Manual blending and assembly were producing variable lead times, with assembly time running to more than five hours a unit.

Through the Made Smarter programme, we carried out a full site visit and developed an approach to tackling this challenge. Working in collaboration with a trusted provider (Mark Wood), we used body cameras to analyse the workflow, which may sound simple but reveals a great deal about where time really goes. We introduced 5S, a structured way of organising the workplace, and reshaped the assembly layout. Assembly time fell from eight hours to under five, and with a revenue grant now in place, we expect it to drop further still, towards three.

The part I value most came after the numbers. The team's technical director had grown wary of business support specialists over the years and told us we'd changed his view of what good support looks like. Staff morale lifted too. That matters as much to me as the reduction in lead times. What was also nice is that I supported the same company nearly 15 years ago to implement a Kanban system which was still in use.

Probe is one of 863 businesses we supported to compete this year. The same approach helped Virasel Valve Solutions in Teesside automate their reporting and win a capital grant for a new test bench, opening markets across the UK and Ireland. And competitiveness isn't only about the shop floor. Through our supply chain work, a single Meet the Buyer event connected Adderstone Living with SMEs across the North, and one of them, the Wakefield tiling firm Palmer Barnes, walked away with a £10,000 tender within days.

From the production line to the procurement room, the goal is the same: helping businesses across the North compete with confidence. When a contract lands, your processes are ready. When a market opens, your technology means you can move.

You can read the full Probe Industries story, and more from across the year, in our 2025/26 Annual Review.  

Read the 2025/26 Annual Review