Concentric investing in Excellence worldwide

19 March 2008

From its headquarters in Birmingham, Concentric PLC, the leading manufacturer of oil, fuel and water pumps for medium to heavy diesel engines, has inaugurated an “Investors in Excellence” programme throughout its operations in the UK, China, India and the USA.

Investors in Excellence (IiE) is a standard designed to improve all key areas of an organisation, including leadership, business planning and the management of the company's people, process, supply chain and customers. IiE is aligned with the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) and the project is supported by Midlands Excellence.

“The programme ensures that approaches are effectively co-ordinated and consistently deployed across the companies. Using the EFQM model enables us to challenge what we do by looking at the results achieved and using this information to highlight improvement opportunities,” says Kjersti Rogneflåten, project co-ordinator for Concentric PLC. “The project has had a good start in UK, India and US and we are using the model as an integral part of establishing our new Chinese factory. Given the performance within the Concentric group, which is already good, we expect to achieve IiE within 12 months from start at each site.”

Ian Dugan, Chief Executive of Concentric PLC, commented: “This programme is a key component of our vision for the company in 2010 and so we're calling it Concentric 1050 Business Excellence. Investors in Excellence is extremely demanding and we are required to provide evidence that we have achieved specific standards in each of nine categories. IiE deals with every aspect of the organisation and is internationally recognized, so achieving the standard will provide the most powerful evidence of our capability and performance in all our operations worldwide.”

Concentric is already accredited to ISO/TS16949, the automotive industry standard, worldwide and the UK operation also has the ISO14001 environmental standard.

Concentric PLC is a leader in diesel engine pump technology for applications ranging from trucks and buses to materials handling, construction, agricultural and off-highway machinery. In addition to oil, fuel and water pumps for diesel engines, Concentric also manufactures fan support brackets and lubrication pumps for transmission and compressor applications. The group centre of excellence for design, development and engineering is located in Birmingham, UK.