Demands and supplies

Quicklide continues to improve its factory, website and employee initiatives as part of a new £2.7m investment plan.

‘Supply and demand’, that long-established economic model of price determination, succinctly sums up the pandemic-driven change in the fenestration industry over the past two years: increasing customer demands coupled with ongoing challenges in the supply chain.

Quickslide is focused on continuing to address these concerns for installers and builders as part of its new £2.7m staggered investment plan. Starting by helping its trade partners better tap into customer demand with a new website that features improved lead generation tools, while continuing to further develop its role in the supply chain.

Supply

“Increasing the automated areas of production is vital to ensure a constant, reliable service to our partners,” says Quickslide’s managing director, Ben Weber. “It means less interruption to production and we can also redeploy existing factory staff, ideal at a time when recruitment is proving challenging for all.”

That’s why Quickslide has made a major investment in a new cutting centre for its vertical sliders, as part of a greater re-layout of the VS factory. The new cutting centre will largely automate the steel reinforcement part of Quickslide’s window fabrication process. This automation increases both throughput and efficiency, whilst giving Quickslide a sizeable step-up in production capacity and greater flexibility to develop new, future product offerings.

“In addition, fool-proof scanning stations will provide warnings to fabricators if, for example, restrictors and hardware are different colours – even refusing to process jobs if something appears to be amiss,” adds Ben.

Using barcode scanning, Quickslide’s bespoke performance monitoring systems help further improve quality and efficiency.

“Our systems have full traceability. Everything is live and visible so we have eyes on our orders from initial enquiries straight through to delivery,” continues Ben.

“We’ve managed to cut down on time spent looking for components – no easy job in a 150,000 ft² facility – by introducing a system that allows us to scan the unit and its location. It also means we can look at the live production stage of various components so we know what job needs doing when, streamlining our work flow in line with lean manufacturing principles.”

Demand

With working from home and hybrid working looking set to stay, demand should continue for home improvements. Although rising cost of living and concerns that the market may be cooling mean effective lead generation will become more important.

“To help us grow with our trade partners, we’re finalising our new website, which will be a leap forward in driving organic growth,” said Ben. “Partners already familiar with our current website layout will be pleased to know we’ve only tweaked the front-end, but we’ve completely reworked the back-end by making investments in clever lead generation tools.

“Our trade partners will have access to their own dashboards where leads can be effectively managed. In essence, it functions as a CRM system for our partners. We’ll also continue to invest in SEO to drive the right kind of customers with the right kind of requirements to our website.”

Looking ahead: staff retention

The last two years have especially proven how much companies need to value employees and their wellbeing. It’s been a challenge to recruit the right industry staff and Quickslide want to make sure that when the right people are being hired, they then want to stay.

“We’re launching a new employee benefits scheme which includes substantial and real-value benefits such as private health care and life insurance,” says Ben.

“We continue to have a 24/7 mental health phone line available to staff and in addition we now have designated trained mental health first aiders.

“Quality communication between all departments also remains a priority and we’re launching a new intranet app, by March 2022, to support this,” he concludes. “It’s a great way to foster ongoing friendly conversation across the workplace, whether it’s celebrating events, welcoming new starters or conducting surveys and sharing feedback.

“It’s a strong start for 2022 for Quickslide, and we’ll be revealing further investment over the next 18 months, so watch this space.”