Paul Markwell

Said the following about Ray Foxton:

“When KRBS approached Unipart Rail to bid for the refurbishment of the footsteps and tread plates for Angel’s Class 16x fleet to make them PRM compliant they had several major issues to overcome. There was a very tight time window to fit the parts, there was no spare parts in existence to use as replacements, no drawings could be found for the parts and the removal of the old part could damage the unit and make it un-usable.

This was a difficult combination of issues to resolve but the Unipart Rail’s New Business Sourcing and Product Development teams, co-ordinated by Ray Foxton, rose to the challenge.

The specification for the Class 16x programme requested removal of the existing tread-plate and footstep, undertaking a number of modifications to them, including making them PRM compliant with the addition of a reflective strip and overhauling them including re-anodising. There are 876 sets to refurbish over a 3 year period.

Several options were considered but due to the tight budget and time available the best solution identified by Unipart Rail was to manufacture the parts all as new components. This solution required the mobilisation of the engineering team to take controlled measurements of the existing parts to create new manufacturing moulds using plastacine impressions, develop new drawings from out of date layout drawings and material specifications to be identical to the existing products and ensured that the parts to be supplied were to the relevant technical and performance Standards. There were also design improvements made to remove areas of the tread-plates that could cause passengers to slip on the surface.

The New Business Sourcing team at Unipart Rail identified new suppliers for the specialist anodised parts, carried out vendor ratings for quality and performance to select the correct partner to support a time-critical supply programme and ensured that the customer was informed at every stage of the process to keep them informed and aware of the progress being made.

As a result of this work by Unipart Rail the product provided fits perfectly onto the train, is available at the depot in advance of the C6 overhaul programme and complies with all of the customer’s technical and performance requirements.

This project is an excellent example of how Unipart Rail takes ownership of a customer problem and provides a fully integrated solution that is delivered on time and within budget.“