Professional Builder visits Quickslide’s extensive West Yorkshire manufacturing hub
If you’re a professional builder you want the products you’ve specified to arrive on site exactly when you need them. That order needs to be complete and to the most consistent level of quality that can be achieved. All sounds very simple, right? Of course, if you are a professional builder you’ll equally know that it doesn’t quite work that way on every project. When things do go awry what inevitably follows is the snowball effect of tradespeople waiting in line to get on the job, with awkward conversations with a client about delays to the build schedule on the horizon.
Find someone who can deliver on all of the above, however, and they are very much your friend, but achieving that level of service and reliability demands an awful lot of hard work and investment. One West Yorkshire-based window and door manufacturer is doing just that and has everything in place to supply just what the trades need.
So just what goes into making sure that your pristine bi fold doors, casement or sash windows, in just the right colour for your customer, get to you in a timely fashion? The simple answer is a very well honed operation and Quickslide’s Brighouse home is very much a case in point. It is here that a significant investment, combined with an ever-watchful eye on productivity and quality produces an enviable end result.
Customer service
Wherever you look on the factory floor, every screen and each process is unique to Quickslide as a business and the product of its internal development team, with customer service the only driver. That’s a principle that extends from the IT system – which has designed out much of the paperwork – right down to the blue carts that deliver multiple pieces of glass to the right workstation and were specially made by a local firm to a bespoke specification.
Taking pride of place is a new £1.71 million machining centre from German manufacturer, Schirmer, delivered to Quickslide’s exact specification. What it promises is an exact product every time, with repeatable quality and drastically reduced levels of offcuts and waste. Managing Director, Ben Weber, explains: “A vertical sliding window is complex, perhaps more so than any other type of window frame. It has always required precision manufacturing, and this equipment now allows us to bring a lot of the preparatory processes online enabling us to produce consistent quality and output all the time.”
Ben continued: “Quickslide was certainly pioneering in the development of the affordable replacement vertical sliding sash window and, as such, we have continually developed and improved the authenticity of our frames over the last 20 years. This is vitally important for an audience that places a great deal of emphasis on historical accuracy, whilst the windows must also comply with the latest Building Regulations and performance standards. The Schirmer allows us to deal with all these factors, improving quality whilst boosting throughput and therefore lowering lead times.
“I once calculated – or attempted to calculate – the number of VS design configurations that we offer and without including bespoke colour-bonding we’re looking at more than a trillion. Our designs and options are ever more complex and the Schirmer means we can do all of these configurations without adding to the lead time with the confidence that we have mastered the art of getting it right, fast and every time. I believe that we already offer the fastest VS lead time in the industry but can do so whilst also offering the greatest choice of design and specification options.”
Increased capacity
By comparison with conventional casement windows, some processes in the manufacture of VS frames are considerably more intense, such as fully mechanical joints and the inclusion of the new slim mid-rail. These complex and labour-intensive options have previously required capacity limitation due to how difficult and labour intensive they are to mass manufacture, but this has now been lifted with the new machining centre, says Ben cautiously: “It is still early days, but we have achieved a capacity increase in true heritage frames which we expect to see increase further as we get better acquainted with the machine and it’s operation.”
“Better material utilisation on steel reinforcement has already been achieved with the switch to 6-metre lengths rather than cut sizes with steel optimisation directly matching profile optimisation of profiles, which is better than 96% plus. We have also trialled the use of RCM [recycled composite material] reinforcement and it works very well. The RCM is around 35% of the cost of steel, is sustainable, is as effective and runs through the saw as usual and suitable for windows on the smaller size without compromising on performance or quality. The flexibility of the Schirmer allows us to trial and experiment freely.”
The Quickslide company ethos is about providing a platform of opportunity for its clients and the industry at large. “We’re a long-term partner business and our customer care provision is extensive,” enthuses Adrian Barraclough. “In addition, we invest extensively in R&D and quality control.”
It’s an attitude which is epitomised by Quickslide’s work with SME housebuilders and developers, encouraging differentiation on their properties by moving beyond white windows, for example. Help is provided to help those clients to consider bi folds, composite doors, and a mix of sash and casement on the front and back of their homes. Housebuilders also need to understand the product in order to install it properly and that requires a close relationship with the supplier including visits from Quickslide service engineers.
Indeed it is abundantly clear that the watchword at Quickslide is quality, with every product that makes its journey through the factory subject to constant inspection. All that ensures that it is delivering for the trades in every sense.
For further information on Quickslide visit Window & Door Suppliers West Yorkshire | Double Glazing Manufacturers (quickslide.co.uk)
