Inside engine assembly excellence at Ricardo: Q&A with Adam Bold

With more than 35 years of manufacturing and assembly experience and over 15 years at Ricardo, Adam Bold has a wealth of knowledge in production, process improvement and engine assembly.

Joining Ricardo in 2010, Adam helped establish many of the production processes still used today. He now leads a team focused on equipment reliability, continuous improvement and delivering high-quality products to our customers. 

Q: Can you tell me more about your career in manufacturing? What influenced your decision to work in automotive?

Adam Bold: I started my career in manufacturing with a brief spell at Sharp Manufacturing, working on an assembly line building microwaves. After that, I spent five years in a garage doing paintwork and mechanics. When Toyota opened an engine factory near where I lived, it felt like the perfect combination of the two things I enjoyed most: the factory environment and the mechanical side of vehicle work. I joined and spent the next 15 years there, progressing to Team Leader on both machining and assembly lines. I had intensive training and shared knowledge, particularly in manufacturing, and that experience shaped much of my career.

In 2010 I relocated from North Wales to Shoreham-by-Sea to join Ricardo, where I helped to set up a new production facility from scratch. Before production started, I spent those early months putting in place many of the production processes and ways of working that I learned at Toyota. I’ve been here ever since and still thoroughly enjoy it.

I’ve always had an interest in cars and motorbikes, so being able to work in the automotive industry, at Ricardo, where we have both transmission manufacturing and engine assembly capabilities, with a product that I’m genuinely passionate about, was very appealing to me.

Q: What does your workday look like as a Process Engineering Lead? What are your key responsibilities?

Adam Bold: My team and I are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of all the equipment on the shop floor, as well as the standardised work that our technicians follow. When everything is running smoothly, we focus on process improvements. When we react to issues and fixing problems we encounter, we put countermeasures in place to make sure they don’t happen again. So, it’s not just about preventative maintenance, but preventing repeat issues in the future.

Fundamentally it’s very similar to when I started my career, more than 35 years ago. The biggest changes have been in the equipment and technology we use, evolving and improving over time. A big part of my responsibility is preparing for changes in customer demand. Recently, I’ve spent a good portion of my time supporting takt time changes to increase our build rate. We’ve just reduced our takt time significantly, which required around 200 hours of preparation work from my team. Ultimately, my job is to be flexible, react to customer requirements and make sure we can deliver the product as efficiently as possible.

Q: What are some of the biggest challenges you face on the shop floor? How do you overcome these challenges?

Adam Bold: As a niche, low volume manufacturer, we focus on just in time delivery for our customers, optimising our facility and skills of our workforce to meet demand. This means that we remain agile and focussed on problem solving when challenges to production schedules arise.  

A key responsibility of my team is to develop and implement alternative processes quickly so production can continue, making sure we maintain the same quality of product we deliver to our customers. 

Learn more about our engine assembly capability

Q: How important is continuous improvement in ensuring on time, high-quality delivery to customers?

Adam Bold: We’re not just focused on fixing equipment if it fails, we’re also focused on finding ways to prevent the same issues happening again in the future. By learning from historical problems and putting effective countermeasures in place, we improve reliability and help ensure we can continue delivering to our customers on time and in full. 
The same applies to quality. Introducing additional checks where needed, and upgrading equipment to detect problems, as well as using the knowledge of our skilled technicians helps us build a better-quality product, operate more efficiently and reduce costs. This ensures we consistently deliver the quality and performance our customers expect.

Q: How do we ensure that our engine assembly technicians have the right learning and development opportunities?

Adam Bold: We invest heavily in training from day one, providing a structured approach when a new technician joins the business. They will typically spend a couple of months learning one workstation before training on additional stations.  No team member is left to work independently until they are fully competent and have been checked and signed off by their trainer, team leader and a quality technician. 
Over time, our technicians rotate across different areas to build their skills and flexibility. Some of our longer-serving colleagues can operate all ten stations on the assembly line, while our goal is for every technician to be competent on at least five.

Q: Having worked at Ricardo for 15+ years, what would you say it’s the most enjoyable thing about your job?

Adam Bold: The depth of knowledge and experience across the team. I work with people from a wide range of backgrounds who bring a huge amount of expertise in engineering, quality and manufacturing. Meaning our leadership and functional teams have a wealth of knowledge and practical experience to draw on.

It’s really rewarding working day in and day out with people who know what they’re talking about. Being able to learn from each other makes Ricardo a great place of work. 

If you would like to learn more about Ricardo’s engine assembly capability, reach out to one of our experts to arrange an appointment.

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