All great businesses are created by spotting an opportunity. So it was for this Rotherham-based company when its founder and current group managing director Chris Rea established the business in 1979. At the time, it was a distributor of mechanical seals, however, one Friday afternoon, it decided that it would no longer be using a distributor model. That meant the fledgling business had customers but no product, although the entrepreneurial outlook, which has remained with the business, simply saw them start manufacturing seals themselves.
In fact, having a clean sheet of paper to design a range of mechanical seals meant that they could look at how to do things better. “It enabled us to design some innovative products from the start and by reinvesting heavily in the business we have been able to maintain that competitive edge,” explained Stephen Shaw, group engineering director at AES Seal. In fact, a lot of what the company does is different – from its route to market, to the way it protects IP and invests in R&D.
“We are very protective of our IP as we have very experienced people in the business that have developed innovative mechanical sealing solutions. As part of creating this skills base, we actively support apprenticeships, whilst all our engineers are encouraged to achieve IMechE chartered or incorporated status,” added Stephen.
The company went on to purchase a large manufacturing site in Rotherham where it grew rapidly. Its headquarters remain on the same site, with additional UK manufacturing facilities in Derby and Bradford, and overseas manufacturing in China, India and Malaysia with a sizeable operation in the US as well as 58 services centres around the world. Unusually, for overseas organisations they fully own a sales and service business in Saudi Arabia.
Investment in manufacturing is ongoing with the latest being a unique twin spindle bar feed 11-axis machine centre, which achieved a five-fold increase in through put as well as in-creasing the scope for custom orders. “Our 11-axis machine in Rotherham can be viewed as a mini-factory in its own right,” added Stephen.
The nature of the business means that service is engrained in the culture. That’s entirely understandable, because if a mechanical seal fails it might stop the entire production line. “Because a replacement seal is needed quickly, we knew that it would be difficult to do it from a single site, which is why we now operate strategic manufacturing locations in the UK, USA and India, with multiple service centres around the world that hold stock and assemble seals to order.”
Now employing 1,700 people and consistently achieving an On Time In Full (OTIF) of 98.5%, the management team have achieved impressive results in what is a competitive market with formidable technology and engineering entry barriers.
“All our parts are manufactured in-house to ensure quality control and full traceability. We even mould our own elastomers, which means, for example, we know that a particular seal is compliant with modern food safety standards. You just don’t get that same level of confidence if the item is manufactured by a third party. We’re constantly looking to innovate and the latest is coating technologies. We are working with the University of Sheffield on how micron-thickness coatings can change the base material properties, which may help improve dry running on mechanical seals.”
Route to market
Unusually, AES Seal has predominantly focused on the end user, as opposed to competitors that target OEMs - selling seals to pump manufacturers. The latter is based on the assumption that if an OEM fits a seal in the pump from the start, the seal supplier is much more likely to continue getting orders for replacement seals in the aftermarket, sometimes at a hefty premium.
“We took a different approach and in the main target engineers that are dissatisfied with the performance of their current supplier or seal and we look at ways we can help them improve their business through increased service and reliability levels.”
Standardisation of pump and seal design has helped in this area and they are now completely interchangeable between different manufacturers. "The largest variable is usually what is being pumped, which ranges from water, raw sewage, nuclear fuels, through to noxious chemicals – anything that gets pumped from one place in a plant to another relies on mechanical seals. That means it is factors like process fluid, temperature and pressure that are the variables which determine mechanical seal specification and performance.
This service philosophy and focus on improving customer’s reliability has helped achieve consistent growth over the last 30 years, reaching a turnover of £145m in 2014/15, with 80% exported. “Being reactive to customers when you offer so many different products takes some doing. However, we design products that are modular, so that we minimise the number of different components – allowing us to increase flexibility and reduce leadtimes.”
Engineering in the DNA
“As we’ve moved into more technologically advanced products, it required a custom approach to manufacturing, rather than calling off from stock, and that again fits our model of having strategically located manufacturing centres around the world. For example, if we have an API seal in a refinery and we are replacing a competitor’s seal we won’t necessarily know what is required until we do the measurements on site, so it is obviously not possible to hold these in stock. Although we would hold the internal mechanisms of the seal in stock, the gland and the sleeve couldn’t be from inventory as we don’t know what it is. That means we need to be able to model those parts, supply the CAM data to the machine and then make them locally on as short a leadtime as possible.”
“Some of our equipment is purposely underutilised because our philosophy is that if we can’t get these parts onto a machine quickly, then we would fail on our commitment of offering exceptional service. Our approach, therefore, is; where we can’t hold inventory, we have to be able to make it quick – and that usually means within hours.”
We run Siemens Teamcentre as part of this engineering-service philosophy. An example of this would be where our UK designers work on a drawing during the day, then pass it on to our US team, who then begin work on the same drawing. The drawing can then be transferred through our Asian design teams at the end of the US working day and then back into the UK team the following day. With our engineering design process tracking the sun via various time-zones, our development lead times have been dramatically reduced.
All engineering and manufacturing standards are controlled from the UK, which means that if the company designs a component part and CNC programme, it doesn’t matter where it’s made within the business, it will be exactly the same.
Retaining this control is essential because not only does it mean that a seal made in India, USA or the UK has interchangeable parts it achieves the same performance standards, for example, ATEX certification. By growing organically rather than through acquiring other seal manufacturers, the company has been able to retain this close control of their manufacturing processes.
“This business has always been driven by the end user, generally where there is dissatisfaction with their current supply route. Our aim is to make the seals last longer and rationalise their stockholding. In actual fact that means we are in the business of ever declining revenue with existing customers over a period of time. However, in order to extend the revenue stream, and to do the best thing for our customers, we operate a reliability and condition-based monitoring business, AVT Reliability.
That fits with our strategy of being reliability professionals rather than just mechanical seal sellers. Our approach is that we are in the business of improving our customers’ business and so a condition based monitoring service fits that approach perfectly.
The future
The business model; “where there is dissatisfaction, go and help the customer”, looks set to stand the company in good stead for the future.
“In the past, where we might have developed product through testing and iteration, we are now able to predict, using our own software, based around FEA, CFX and CfD, how our seals will perform. This kind of understanding, before a customer even places an order, is needed for our work manufacturing highly specified products such as those used for compressor dry gas seals that can operate at 45,000 rpm and up to 350bar sealing flashing hydrocarbon gases in remote locations.”
“Our software allows us to predict with greater accuracy how these seals and others will perform in the field and we see ourselves continuing to move up this technology ladder. If we bring all this together alongside our people talent, IP, working with customers and R&D investment, you can understand why we see ourselves as a company that offers engineered solutions.&rdquo
For more information visit the website www.aesseal.co.uk.
Component Seals
AES Seal has recently launched a completely reengineered modular component seal range that allows configurable component seals to be built to order. In doing so, they did something completely unexpected and unique in the industry and moved manufacturing back within the company, principally so that they could control product quality and service levels better. “That start point was to ask themselves; what can we do to improve the design and make it better.”
With 10,000 product lines available from stock and over 44,000 product permutations configurable, the new component seals range offers customers the greatest possible product availability, quality assurance, and service. The range, in development for almost 4 years, incorporates unique patented features which help to improve pump reliability, such as improved seal face cooling through directed barrier fluid flow systems, hydraulically balanced seal face technology and “plug in” designs to improve performance and reliability
Tom Broadbent, Project Manager, explained: “Taking back control, of our component seal manufacturing has allowed us to improve quality and reduce supply times. The customer service we were receiving previously wasn’t in line with our expectations.”