This article contains paid-for content created in collaboration with Leitz.
City Building is one of Scotland’s largest construction companies, providing a wide range of construction, maintenance, and manufacturing services for Glasgow council and the local area. City Building has more than 2,000 staff and is one of Scotland’s largest employers of apprentices with around 200 apprentices on its books. The Manufacturing Division, Royal Strathclyde Blindcraft Industries (RSBi), is Europe’s largest supported business and one of the UK’s most successful social enterprises. Based in a specially adapted factory in the Springburn area of Glasgow, more than half of RSBi’s 250 staff have a disability.
City Building recently celebrated being the first construction firm in Scotland, to achieve the Investor in Young People (IYP) Platinum accreditation. They also received The Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2021: Promoting Opportunity , after having previously been granted the Sustainable Development Award in both 2018 and 2012.
For over 20 years, Leitz Tooling has been working closely with City Building to develop their kitchen and furniture manufacturing business. City Building operates multiple CNC’s, edge banders, sawing machines and much more. Leitz has supplied City Building with a large variety of tooling , mainly comprising of saw blades, router cutters, edge banding tools and drill bits.
“Before we moved over to Leitz tooling”, John explains “we used local tooling companies for our new tools and sharpening. We had the problem that not all of the companies had the same capabilities, meaning we had to go through countless suppliers just to tool up one factory. This meant we had next to no ability to track our tools, their wear and sharpening status. It also made it substantially more expensive.”
“Leitz tooling had what we are looking for – traceability.”
With the Leitz tool and saw management system, every tool is tracked and traced from its manufacture at one of the global Leitz facilities down to the number of sharpens at a local service centre. This transparent reporting system has been influential of the success of City Building over the last few decades and allows Leitz to offer insights into manufacturing processes.
“Compared to before, it’s like night and day, we have back up. If we have an issue and call Leitz, more often than not a representative will appear on-site the same day. We also had an issue with some edge bander cutters and the national sales manager flew out to visit us and optimised the tooling.” John also went on to elaborate how the Leitz tool management tracking system has impacted their business in terms of health and safety, a priority considering the unique high disability rate in the factory. “We cannot overstate the safety aspect of the tooling, if anything bad happened we can trace the cutter to find the root cause” additionally he mentions the impact of one of the most overlooked aspects in factories and workshops – noise. “Since we tooled up with Leitz saw blades, we have noticed reduced noise in the factory”.
John is aware that, apart from the Health and Safety benefits of reduced noise for their employees, noise also equates to vibration. This is the main cause of poor finish, tool wear, machine bearing wear and motor breakdowns. By addressing noise, you address many problems and avoid their associated high costs. When machines stop due to bearing wear or motors needing to be replaced, it can quickly become very expensive! Leitz always asks customers: “would you have a unbalanced tyre on your car? No? So why have it on a very expensive machine?”
John also goes into detail about the quality of Leitz cutting tools and the financial benefits the tooling has brought to City Building. Leitz can sharpen used tooling back to like new condition and with their own tools, can achieve a significant amount of sharpens per saw blade or tool. “The quality of the saw blades is outstanding.”
“We are buying less because of the servicing from Leitz.”
“The sawblades have a longer use time and the quality is second to none. As we work with a lot of MDF, we experienced small chips on most workpieces. With Leitz we achieve nice clean cuts, whereas before, we were getting saw marks which caused a lot of sanding work before spray painting.”
Finally, John discusses the hidden implications of a changing your tooling supplier, City Building’s set up and cycle times have been impacted by the change of tooling. “Production cycle times have certainly reduced since switching to Leitz, we have absolute confidence in the tooling and rarely need to re work a workpiece. Because of the reduced chipping and tool service, all our cutters are lasting much longer than before. Our set up times are similar. However, because the tools last so long we have significantly reduced downtime from tool changes.” Overall, this improvement of efficiencies has allowed CB to expand their business and produce more products in the same timeframe. Reducing lead times for Glasgow council and the local community.
Leitz tooling is known for giving solid technical advice to customers. “When we call up, they are there. They advise on future projects, provide training opportunities to our staff and you know you’re not going to get ripped off. Leitz would rather sharpen my sawblade than sell me a new one, that’s putting people before profit.”
If your business suffers from a lack of traceability with your tooling, has concerns over health and safety issues such as dust and noise pollution, needs quality technical advice, demands high quality and precision cutting tools or is looking to reduce spending through sustainable tool servicing – then Leitz is right business partner for you. With 8 service centres across the UK and dedicated team of sales and service representatives, Leitz is here to support growth in your business.
Contact the team via email to learn more or visit their website to keep up to date with the latest and greatest tooling solutions from Leitz.
