The activities of the Industry Forum stem from the collaboration between the major players in the industry, whereby Master Engineers, world experts in manufacturing process improvement and acknowledged practitioners in this subject, began working together in the UK. These Master Engineers came from Honda, Nissan, Toyota, General Motors and Volkswagen; never before had these companies collaborated in a single industry focussed programme of improvement activities.

These Master Engineers became the trainers for a cadre of UK engineers, to whom the tools and techniques used by the Master Engineers would be transferred. These Industry Forum engineers would then transfer the skills, knowledge and delivery techniques of the tools of process improvement into the companies with whom they worked. This was the essence of the “Learning by doing” programmes developed by the Industry Forum. The Master Engineers have now returned to their respective companies and training of Industry Forum Engineers is undertaken by Senior Industry Forum Engineers who carry on the high standard of work.

The Industry Forum has created a number of programmes based around a Common Approach Toolkit to enable any company in any part of the supply chain to make real, measurable improvements in quality, cost and delivery, while at the same time improving partnerships with their customers. The Industry Forum programmes are practical, shop floor based process improvement activities implemented with a “hands-on” approach by a team of high calibre Industry Forum engineers. They work with a company’s employees to bring about tangible, sustainable bottom-line results. In effect, they are the industry’s own dedicated resource for process improvement.

Since 1996 the SMMT Industry Forum has worked with over 450 car and components manufacturers to improve their performance and has also trained engineers from a number of other sectors in the tools and techniques of manufacturing process improvement.