Natalie Clark joined Colson Valves in August last year, bringing with her almost 20 years of production planning experience across a range of manufacturing environments. She’s the person responsible for making sure that everything needed to fulfil an order – materials, capacity, timing, subcontractors – is in the right place at the right time.
What drew you to Colson?
I was contacted by a recruiter who had seen my details. I came in and sat down with Chris and Steve, and the atmosphere immediately felt right. What really got me was how they talked about the future of the business – there was real ambition there, and a concrete idea of what they wanted to achieve. They were clear about what they wanted to change and why. It was inspiring and it made me feel confident about the longevity of the place.
Looking back now, almost a year in, there’s been a lot of improvement in that time. There’s always more to do, but the direction is clear.
What does a typical day look like?
We run reports overnight that update the system with any new demand, so the morning starts with checking those off against the sales orders and making sure everything lines up. After that, the day is largely spent making sure production and assembly are where they need to be in the plan, that everyone has what they need to do their jobs, and dealing with customers who want an update on their order.
There’s quite a lot of coordination involved that isn’t always obvious from the outside – if a valve needs painting it goes off site, so that has to be timed correctly. If a customer’s inspector is coming in to witness testing, you need to make sure the order is ready for them on the right day. It’s a lot of plates spinning at once, really.
What’s the most rewarding part?
When everything goes right and the customer is happy. That email from a customer saying thank you, or just knowing that something went out on time and exactly as it should – that’s what makes it worthwhile. It sounds simple but it’s what the whole job is working towards.
And the most challenging?
When things don’t go right, picking yourself up and making sure you deal with it properly and learn from it. Not everything runs perfectly – materials can be late, capacity can be tight – and in those situations it’s about finding a way through rather than dwelling on it. If there’s an issue, we have a weekly production meeting where we’ll flag it and plan around it – if a material is going to be late, we look at whether there’s a smaller job that can slot in to keep things moving. Beyond that, the access to people here is good. The machine shop manager will come upstairs, I’ll go downstairs, the assembly manager gets involved – everyone brings their own experience and we figure it out together.
How would you describe the culture?
From the very first day here, everyone was warm and welcoming. I’ve worked in places where you pass people on the shop floor and don’t really know them. That doesn’t happen here. Everybody knows everybody else, and I think that matters a lot when you’re working closely together every day. It’s small, and it’s friendly, and Chris has put together a really good team at Colson. What more could you want?
If you’d like to find out more contact the Colson Valves team, we’re always happy to help!