Dennis & SISIS Revisited
The last time the press were invited to tour the Dennis Mowers facility in Kirk Langley, Derby, was in June 2010. MD Ian Howard’s parting words were ‘watch this space’. Inviting them back again in October 2012 all could see that ‘the space’ has been taken up with the SISIS purchase by parent company Howardson Ltd.
The purpose of the June 2010 event was to officially open their new 9,600 sq. ft. factory next to the existing 10,000 sq. ft. facility. This effectively doubled the existing manufacturing and assembly capacity and marked a significant moment in the company’s history. At that time an additional building of some 6000 sq. ft. was also erected for commercial letting, but visitors to the October gathering saw it fully operational in the assembly of SISIS equipment – something Ian had up his sleeve!
With the SISIS range somewhat physically larger than the Dennis products Howardson has added again to the buildings on site with a 9000 sq. ft. high bay unit for parts and finished products – bringing the area to around 35000sq ft.
The SISIS product range has undergone substantial redevelopment since becoming a division of Howardson on 4th January 2011. Ian explained, “Back in late 2010 our team saw SISIS as a brand and product range that had become somewhat neglected. It needed some energy, massive amounts of design time, enthusiasm and of course financial investment. The brand itself needed polishing. There was a lot of experience and knowledge at Sisis Macclesfield, that’s why we retained key staff – knowledge and experience. Some 17 of the original staff from Macclesfield are now in the team.
“The SISIS brand is still very well recognised around the world, most have heard of it but it was associated with the past, not dissimilar to Dennis after we took that on back in 1981.
“We’ve been very busy with Sisis since January 2011 with more than 400 design improvements making them better performance, easier to use, easier to maintain and more ergonomic. We completely redesigned what was the Rosca and renamed it Brush Pro – this was launched at Saltex this year and it was very well received. Massive design works have also been done on the Dart aerator.”
The Howardson approach has always been to produce a quality engineered product. Sisis and Dennis are built on great engineering and we are proudly British Made with the vast majority of components manufactured in house in our modern engineering factory. We import very little other than engines and some transmission components. All of our fabrication work is done by a local partner firm 7 miles away and powder coating at another firm just ½ mile down the road. British manufacture brings quality, dependability and rapid delivery times. You can’t achieve that with imports. It also brings much needed employment to the local area. Our team is now 50 strong.
Ian again, “We need to be lean; efficient and nimble in our ability to react to changing market requirements. As well as technical changes there is the unknown effects of weather change, you can suddenly experience a peak demand for a product due to bad weather. Our manufacturing systems and techniques are continually evolving. We continue to invest further in machine tools for in house component production. This year alone we have taken delivery of 2 state of the art machines costing over £450k to manufacture Dennis and Sisis components. With such a large product portfolio now it is impossible to stock equipment on the shelf but with lean manufacturing techniques our target lead time on Dennis and SISIS products is 4 weeks.”
Ian sees the most significant change over the last 2 years to be ‘the seasonality change’. Dennis mowing equipment is traditionally used from late spring to early autumn but the SISIS range of equipment is used pretty much all year round. Increased exports have also led to a more even year through demand.
He concluded the visit by saying that the synthetic market was very much a major focus for them in the future. Dennis & SISIS see it as a growing market where they can offer a range of quality UK manufactured machinery for Turf Professionals in that sector. However, they recognise there is a massive lack of knowledge where synthetic turf is concerned and have therefore produced a dedicated brochure on their Syn-Pro range giving clear, concise information on the product range.