​Product designers new systems pay off

​AME Group, which was founded from the kitchen table of Ian Jones in 1996, has grown to a 22-strong team of experienced product design engineers and is hoping to expand its workforce further in order to meet growing demand for its services.

The company works extensively within the medical, automotive and defence sectors and called on help from RiDO to help identify ways of improving the way the business operated to unlock its significant future growth potential.

To maximise its growth potential, managing director Richard Proctor recognised that the systems the company relied upon to manage workflow required improvement.

The company began exploring ways of integrating its quoting system into its workflow channels and accountancy programmes. They applied for help through the South Yorkshire Digital Innovation Grant scheme, a match-funded ERDF grant designed to help businesses embrace new forms of technology to overcome the productivity challenges they were facing.

Mr Proctor said: “The new systems we’ve implemented and integration that we’ve managed to achieve have helped us to operate much more effectively. For example, when we quoted for a job previously, an important factor was the physical number of materials required to produce it – something that had to be done manually. Our new way enables this to be calculated automatically. The savings this has allowed us to achieve have been the equivalent of one full-time job, and we’re planning to expand our workforce further.”