Triumph is the UK’s largest motorcycle manufacturer. Despite a tough economic climate, the company’s Hinckley plant in Leicestershire will this year produce 58,000 motorcycles – 10,000 more than five years ago.
The sales growth, driven by expansion in emerging markets such as Brazil, is the latest chapter in the story of a company that can trace its history back more than 110 years. During that time there have been ups and downs, iconic designs, great escapes and devastating factory fires.
Over the past 25 years, the company has been rebuilding itself, reinforcing the strong heritage of the brand with quality engineering and marketing focused on the individualistic persona of its motorcycles. The success has made the company’s owner John Bloor, who bought the firm in 1983, a very wealthy man, and has created an impressive global footprint of distributors. There are manufacturing plants in Brazil, India and Thailand. Worldwide, the company employs 2,300 people.
Hinckley remains its largest manufacturing operation, and its research and development centre. There are more than 900 staff here, and on the shopfloor there’s a refreshing mix of old hands and fresh faces, a relaxed but busy atmosphere, and a shared passion for the product that bodes well for the future.
Triumph makes six types of motorcycle and has 46 models in production. Regional variations mean the bikes can vary a great deal in specification. The entire bike, including all the engine and chassis, is designed at Hinckley. Stuart Wood, chief engineer for concept and electrical at Triumph, says there is at least one significant new model every year.
The company is an ‘engineer-heavy’ business, admits Wood. Around 300 full-
time professional engineers work at Hinckley, organised into teams working on different models. With so many different models in development simultaneously, project management is paramount. There are separate project managers in addition to design team leaders, ensuring that stage gates and design, manufacturing and quality goals are met.
Commonality does exist between some parts of the bikes, but it is more limited than a common chassis platform for cars. “For a motorbike, the engine is more of a platform,” he says. “It’s the heart of the bike, and you build out from it. Although the engine has to be for a particular motorbike, you can build derivative models from that engine platform. But we can’t put four different engines into the same chassis, because the bike is optimised around the engine. There is no space to spare.”
The design process starts by identifying an opportunity in the market. The product is planned and the specification defined. From this brief, a design team will produce the initial layout in conjunction with the styling. Mechanical and aesthetic design are split functions within the engineering department. But, unlike a car’s design, where styling is done first, the two strands progress at the same time. “Car styling is all about the surfaces you can see, which isn’t all of the car,” says Wood. “With a bike, everything is built-in – you cannot apply styling to a motorcycle. We have to run in conjunction with the styling.”
It takes 18 months to develop a new motorcycle from scratch to manufacture. After six to eight months, the design team will prototype a ‘mule’ bike, which is set up with the geometry and engine and chassis attributes of the finished bike. It’s during this development riding and set-up that the bike really “comes alive” for the first time, he says.
The design goes straight to production tooling. The first bike’s core components – the frame, wheels, brakes and suspension – will all be off-tool. The first ride is, therefore, an important occasion. “But we have a high degree of confidence that all our target stiffnesses, geometries, weight distribution, the ergonomics are all dialled in and will be fine,” says Wood. “We’re not surprised when it all works.”
Recent technological advances in Triumph’s motorcycles have focused on electronics to improve safety, increase efficiency and reduce emissions. Engines have got more complex in fuel control. Rider assistance systems such as anti-lock braking and traction control have been added. But there is a fine line to tread, he says. “A bike is all about the riding and the experience. Everything we do brings character, style and fun to the bike. You don’t want to be ‘nannied’ by electronics, but you want to know it’s there.”
The fact that a user actively rides a motorcycle makes a fully autonomous one unlikely. Equally, the company is unlikely to develop electric motorcycles any time soon. “The weight and range of e-bikes are major negatives, as with all vehicles,” says Wood. “Most of our customers want the range. The weight is such an intrinsic part of how a motorbike handles. You can hide the extra weight in a car, but not with a bike.”
The weight factor also goes against one of the central appeals of a Triumph motorcycle – good handling. The firm’s most popular bikes in the last five years have been the Speed triple, the Street triple and the Adventure bikes. “We’ve got a good reputation for handling,” he says. “It should be intuitive. The chassis and throttle control should just flow. There’s an equal emphasis on engine and chassis development in the department.
“The electronics are developed at the same time, not bolted on. There are more features to include now. It’s a complex, high-performance product. You are packaging all of that as tightly as you can underneath a rider, with minimal materials, within a commercial constraint.”
All the manufacturing is done on site at Hinckley, so there is close integration between manufacturing and design. Designers are definitely ‘designing for manufacture’.
Jim Gough, project manager of emerging markets for Triumph, agrees that design for manufacturing is a mantra “ingrained in the company”. The integration between manufacturing and design works both ways, and improvements in manufacturing methods mean the finished bikes are a lot closer to the net design. “Our machining technology and high-speed cutting tools mean we get closer to what the designers want and the tolerances they ask for,” he says.
Triumph’s multiplicity of models and updates complicates manufacturing. “Different specifications can vary for instruments or exhausts, for example,” says Gough. “It’s complex. There is a flow process. The difference from a car factory is that, whereas it has a single model line, we build any model at any time, to order. It’s complete flexibility.”
The system starts with a dealer placing the order and flows down to the manufacturing cells. Manufacturing uses a passport system to identify bikes, and each cell is broken down into chunks with product colours and codes.
Triumph’s operation at ‘factory one’ is split into three main areas: a machining area for the engine and other components, the warehouse, and the assembly line and test areas. Anything that is critical to the performance or appearance of the bike is made in-house, to guarantee quality. This category equates to a lot of the bike: entire camshafts, engine cases, chassis fabrications, fuel tanks and plastic panels.
The engines are produced at Triumph’s high-pressure diecasting facility in Thailand. These raw castings are washed and machined at Hinckley, and then built up. “Piston technology is now quite a delicate task,” says Gough.
The warehouse has 8,000 part locations and serves as the central European and US distribution point. “If you don’t get the picks done, the track stops,” he says. The site dispatches 950 bikes a day. The business is seasonal – more bikes are sold between April and September, so manufacturing peaks during the autumn and winter.
In a separate area, the assembly line snakes around the floor, with the motorcycles built up from the engine at the core. An individual motorcycle takes about an hour to assemble. Around 12 are built every hour. The company is moving to direct control tools to replace the air tools on the assembly line.
Triumph carries out careful inspection and testing throughout the line. There are internal probing systems within machines. All bikes are put into the static test cell at the end of the line, where they are monitored for compression and oil leaks using an air decay check, and then tested on the rolling road before being packaged. “Quality is built into the process. The designers don’t compromise, and we collaborate with them to optimise the design,” says Gough.
Wood adds: “People often say that design is all about compromise. It’s not. It’s about optimising. We do everything we can within what the customer wants and what the reality is.”
The idea of uncompromising quality in design and manufacturing is core to Triumph’s brand. So far, it’s enabled the company to prosper during the second century of its existence. Whether it propels it to a third century is something that’s in the hands of its engineers
Timeline: On the road for more than a century
1902
The first Triumph motorcycle is produced, powered by a 2.2hp Minerva engine and subsequently known as No 1
1927
The Coventry factory is expanded to 500,000ft2 (46,451m2) and employs around 3,000 people, producing 30,000 units a year
1955
Johnny Allen hits 193mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats, riding a Streamliner powered by a tuned 650cc Thunderbird motor
1959
The iconic T120 Bonneville 650 becomes the highest-selling British twin of all time
1963
A TR6 650 Trophy is ridden, jumped and crashed by Bud Ekins and, more famously, Steve McQueen in the film The Great Escape
1968
Evel Knievel attempts to jump the fountain at Caesar’s Palace casino in Las Vegas
on a Bonneville
1975
Bonneville production continues after the workers form a co-op to keep the Meriden factory going
1983
The Meriden factory closes its doors. John Bloor acquires the Triumph name and Meriden site, and licenses a few Bonnevilles to be made by Les Harris in Devon
1990
The company unveils six new models at the Cologne Show, Germany
2002
A fire guts the main assembly plant. It is rebuilt and manufacturing again in less than six months
2007
The Street Triple model is launched
2012
Sales reach 50,000, supported by a new subsidiary in Brazil