Fit for a king

This award, one of the highest accolades for business excellence in the United Kingdom, acknowledges how AML’s development and application of novel technologies and lean processes, including forging, automation and robot loading, unlocked a two-fold improvement in productivity that enabled an aerospace prime to expand into the lucrative private aircraft market.

“This is an incredible achievement for the whole AML team and a recognition of our expertise and commitment to excellence,” says the firm’s co-founder and managing director Dr Gareth Morgan.

“Innovation was hard wired into our DNA from the very beginning which is why the most demanding customers on the planet, from aerospace and defence to land based gas turbines that complement the green energy / renewable sector, trust us with the manufacture of strategically critical components.”

The award highlights an innovation in the precision manufacture of complex aerofoil geometries for jet engines.

Dr Morgan said: “By receiving information early, we were able to create bespoke machining programs and introduce robotic loading and automation to generate efficiencies from the outset.

“On the technology front, we developed an adaptive machining algorithm that ensures each component’s features are perfectly blended with the other components’ surfaces, increasing its performance and reducing rejected parts.

“The icing on the innovation cake is a patented vibration-reducing damping fixture and a unique robotic cell that together helped double production rates for the client while improving product quality. “

Originally a spin-out from the award-winning Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre – itself the recipient of the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2007 – AML received a £1.98 million Renewal Action Plan grant from the South Yorkshire Mayoral Authority in 2022 to accelerate the creation of 32 new high value added jobs.

The King’s Award for Enterprise Innovation was driven by funding from the Aerospace Technology Institute and has resulted in eight new roles to support the new production cell built to manufacture these components, consisting of six machine operators and two manufacturing engineers.

Today AML is recognised as a market leader in delivering flexible manufacturing capability at the cutting edge of machining technologies and efficiencies.

Dr Morgan said: “We work collaboratively with our customers to understand their changing needs and challenges, which enables us to deliver technologically advanced solutions.

“But it’s by investing in our people and creating a culture of innovation across the business that we can make these step-changes in productivity for our clients. The King’s Award for Enterprise Innovation tells us and our customers that AML sets a high bar and then leaps over it.”

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