WINNING WAYS FOR PARAGON THROUGH CITIZEN, MIYANO AND FAMILY CONNECTIONS

Invited by his brother-in-law, cricket ace Darren Gough to come along and support the England veterans cricket team in the inaugural Cricket Legends of Barbados International (CLOBI) Masters Twenty/20 cup, Paul Kratovil, managing director of specialist turn-mill component subcontractor Paragon Precision Products ended up kitted out as 12th man as a member of the England winning team.

Said Mr Kratovil: “I went along in December to carry bags and help in the changing room and ended up training with the England Over 35s as they very successfully worked their way to the finals beating teams such as Sri-Lanka and West Indies. Then to my amazement at the final, due to an injury in the team, I was called upon as 12th man in front of 10,000 crazy cricket fans at the Kensington Oval in Christchurch, Barbados.”

Mr Kratovil’s week out in the sun and the eight wicket win over South Africa, will never be forgotten. He said: “It was surreal and to top it all, I was presented with a miniature CLOBI Cup by Sir Garfield Sobers and was treated as a hero when the England team took me along to visit schools on the island.”

Winning ways have continued for Mr Kratovil’s family owned Paragon Precision Products of Milton Keynes as well. The company has gone from strength to strength, taking on 12 new customers over the last year. This has more than countered any reduction in batch sizes which in some cases have been up to 30 per cent as the recession and customer destocking started to bite. Said Mr Kratovil: “We have always tried to maximise our efficiency, productivity and machine utilisation but the rapid fall back in the turned part market 18 months ago certainly brought our business into focus.”

He recounted that over the previous three years the company rode the crest of a wave working flat out but the market quickly changed. He said: “To our benefit we found we were able to react to what was happening largely due to our setters being able to capitalise on the way they could change over the Citizen CNC sliding head and Miyano fixed head turn-mill centres. This enabled us to cope with the effects of greater frequency of smaller batches due to the ease and speed of setting these machines.”

He maintains the building of the 15 man business, plus an apprentice now in his third year, with his father John as chairman and brother Mark as commercial director, around Citizen CNC sliding head turn-mill centres – the company has bought 10 top of the range M32 and L20 machines over the last decade- gave them the flexibility to rapidly adapt to any changing market conditions. And it was this capability and experience that lead to the installation of the Miyano BNJ-51SY2.

This installation immediately helped Paragon’s ability to draw in new contracts from its existing customer base and attract new customers due to the increased bar capacity of 51 mm. This improved sales to military and commercial fibre-optics sectors, subsea, oil and gas, laser, scientific instrument, telecoms, medical, sensor and hydraulics industries.

The decision to install the Miyano alongside existing turning centres clearly met the need for increased turn-milling using similar techniques to the Citizens. He said: “So much work now requires complex milling cycles, that the seven-axis machine having the ability to hold 18 driven tools in its 12 and six-station all-driven turrets, each with the added flexibility of Y-axis cross-feeds, gave so much potential to minimise productivity and maximise output.“

He said: “It was the close association between Miyano and Citizen that really endorsed our decision to purchase the BN51 over other machines in the market. We had built up such good relationships with Citizen over the years and in that time put their service and support to the test which was always met with a positive response.”

Mr Kratovil insisted that everyone within Paragon is so passionate over their machines but the feeling is equally intense that each installation has to earn a return against its investment and the service it is able to provide to customers. He said: “Uptime and reliability are paramount and we have never been let down by Citizen Machinery UK. Now with both sliding head and fixed head machine types, virtually supplied from the same camp, it would have been tempting fate to go elsewhere.”

With the combination of Citizen and Miyano machining technology Paragon’s extension of its turn-milling capability has proven to be a real bonus in the connector industry. He said: “The two machine types have such high orders of flexibility to combine operations. We are now able to produce some parts in one cycle that took up to seven settings by previous suppliers to customers. Our ability to overlap operations, perform all the deburring in-cycle and in a controlled fashion means consistency from the first to the last part in the batch draws very positive feedback from customer’s quality departments.”

He follows on to expand that once cycles are fine tuned on both machine types, operations are very stable and consistent which means total confidence to run unmanned between 5pm and the start of the morning shift. He confirmed: “That is where margins become realistic which enables our continued investment in the latest technology to move the business forward.”

Next on the agenda for Paragon is the expansion of the inspection and quality department with a high specification co-ordinate measuring machine. This move is reasoned by Mr Kratovil as a forerunner to the business to diversify into larger components which will also involve more complex turn-milling.

“We have set the precedent by upsizing from 32 mm with the Citizens to 51 mm capacity with the Miyano and we are very confident that if we can provide the same service to customers, we will generate more work without fear of the company becoming difficult to manage or we start to let customers down.”