Out and about

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The Ginho Europe team will be at the following shows as visitors, so do let us know if you are planning to attend:

 

Achema
22nd – 26th – August – 2022 – Frankfurt
https://www.achema.de/en/

 

Automechanika Frankfurt
13th – 17th – September 2022 – Frankfurt
https://automechanika.messefrankfurt.com/frankfurt/en.html

 

IAA Hannover
20th – 25th – September 2022 – Hannover
https://www.iaa.de/en/transportation/for-visitors/experience-the-iaa/iaa-2022

 

Stainless Steel World Conference & Exhibition
27th – 29th – September 2022 – Maastricht
https://stainless-steel-world-event.com/

 

Al Expo (Aluminium)
27th – 29th September 2022 – Dusseldorf
https://www.aluminium-exhibition.com/en-gb/for-visitors.html

 

IZB
11th – 13th – October 2022 – Wolfsburg
https://www.izb-online.com/en/index.html

 

Zero Emission Mediterranean
12th – 14th October 2022 – Rome
https://www.zeroemission.show/

 

Hydrogen Technology
19th – 20th October 2022 – Bremen
https://www.hydrogen-worldexpo.com

 

Global Automotive Components & Suppliers
8th – 10th – November 2022 – Stuttgart
https://www.globalautomotivecomponentsandsuppliersexpo.com/en/

 

London EV Show
29th Nov – 1st Dec 2022 – London
https://www.londonevshow.com/

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Meet Matthias

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Matthias Klasen

Ginho Europe’s German team is led by vice general manager Matthias Klasen, who speaks Mandarin as well as English, French and German and has over 12 years’ experience of the automotive market – having worked for Mercedes, BMW and Continental, as well as Lufthansa.

Born in France, Matthias spent much of his childhood in Beijing. Then in 2010, he moved to Germany to do his apprenticeship in logistics and after that a Bachelor’s degree in logistics management. In 2017, Matthias moved to Ohio in the US to complete his MBA, and now he lives in Frankfurt.

Having joined Ginho last August, Matthias works closely with his commercial manager Sven Eckert, administrator Julian Schulte and other European colleagues who provide quality control, logistics and finance support. The team in Germany is currently thriving on the back of high demand for Ginho products. Matthias says: “We work really closely with our Ginho Europe colleagues, providing customers with a seamless service across the territories to the highest possible standard. Indeed, being very collaborative makes us really productive as a group.”

Ginho Germany sponsors a local football team who have just secured promotion.

Looking ahead, Matthias’s priorities are to capitalise on the areas of market growth and the potential for new technological innovation around combustion engines, for example. He comments: “It is interesting to witness projects involving hydrogen powered cars and trucks, because you don’t need to change the existing infrastructure on a big scale. This is a very interesting area for Ginho Europe.”

To find out more about Ginho’s operation in Germany, please email [email protected].

 

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Value Added Value Engineering

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More and more customers are benefitting from Ginho engineers’ ability to optimise technology, optimise process and optimise costs – which are the essential principles of Value Added Value Engineering (VAVE).

VAVE is a very exciting part of Ginho Europe’s service because it is not only something that is explored at the start of a contract. Indeed, many customers are gaining advantage from VAVE initiatives mid-contract. “Circumstances may well have changed two years into a seven year contract,” explains European business development manager Stuart Lowe, “so there could be an opportunity for our team of engineers to look at how a process could be simplified, or two components combined into one, or the casting process re-specified. And if the result is a saving on cost, this will be passed on to the customer. What’s not to like?!”

With a team of 150 engineers on board, Team Ginho has a wealth of expertise, experience and sheer brain power to explore what is possible.

Stuart adds: “Of course, VAVE principles will be applied at launch stage, but we believe that VAVE is much more than that. Typically, it has been needed because of a predicted shortage of a particular material or an increase in the price. But these days engineers will also be looking for other benefits – a lighter solution, a quieter solution, lower emissions, easier assembly, less wear or longer life.

“We like to work with our customers very much as a partnership. We are in it for the long-term. And if we can add value at any stage, this has to be good for everyone. And that work ethic runs throughout the Ginho organisation.”

The Ginho Group provides VAVE solutions for a number of major global brands. To find out how the team could help your business, please email [email protected].

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Multi-sector product launch engineering

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Having brought hundreds of bespoke components to market for customers over the years, the team at Ginho Europe has accumulated vast amounts of experience in delivering new products to multiple sites across Europe on time and in full.

Adding value at every possible touchpoint, the Ginho team provides a dedicated service for customers throughout the launch process, delivering proactive, pre-emptive project management, whether for 50 prototypes or a 2.5 million part annual order.

Ginho Europe offers customers a unique service in a number of ways. Many of which emanate from the organisation’s size and scale, as Ginho is essentially a one stop shop with in-house tooling design, testing and manufacturing.

 

Dedicated service 

While Ginho’s manufacturing plant in China is huge and can flex to meet the needs of customers, it is the personal service that offers additional value. Regardless of the massive scale of some contracts, Ginho’s logical approach and digital systems make the entire project comprehensible for all involved.

Key elements of the product launch service include:

  • Three-way video calls between the customer, manufacturing plant engineers and product launch team
  • A critical path that maps out every stage of the process down to the last hour
  • A local, UK-based relationship – with a direct virtual bridge to Asia
  • Bi-lingual documentation – which avoids anything being lost in translation between English and Mandarin and vice versa
  • Weekly project updates.

Ginho’s Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) systems are granular and while the scope of each and every PPAP requires much scrutiny by definition, as a one stop shop with all stages of production in-house, any extra checks or amendments can be done quickly and efficiently. Examples might be X-ray reports on porosity or adjusting the design of a tool prototype.

 

Daily check-in

The Ginho Europe team speaks to colleagues at the manufacturing plant every day for an update and with many of them having visited the factory, they are very familiar with the set up over there.

Being in regular contact with customers as a project progresses means that Ginho gets a first-hand view of what is important to that individual, which can regularly result in suggestions being made like changes to packaging or an amended transport schedule that have no additional cost, but improve the overall experience and delivery for the client’s business.

With 15 to 20 different documents for every PPAP, attention to detail is vital. This focus is applied to production too and there is a master schedule with timing for all to see that runs across the 8-to-12-week production process – embracing tooling (which typically takes four weeks); wax models and shell making, shell drying, pouring, shot blasting, rough casting and inspection; machining of the component and inspection; documentation packing and shipping. Each element has an allocation in hours – so any stakeholder can get an accurate view of any product launch programme when they need it.

Communication and being totally transparent is key in the delivery of a successful new product launch and the Ginho team gets a real buzz from seeing how a project progresses and evolves; and customers are benefitting too as they get reassurance at every stage of the process and can update their own stakeholders and colleagues with confidence.

 

To find out more about Ginho Europe’s product launch service, please email [email protected].

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Out and about

The Ginho Europe team have been busy visiting international, and UK customers face to face and speaking with potential new clients over recent months. It’s good to see events and exhibitions are now able to go ahead, and will be at the following shows as visitors, so do let us know if you are planning to attend, and we can arrange to meet up.

Lamma Expo
4th – 5th May 2022 @ Birmingham
https://www.lammashow.com/

World Hydrogen Summit & Exhibition
9th – 11th May 2022 @ Rotterdam Ahoy
https://www.world-hydrogen-summit.com/

Automotive Hungary
10th – 13th May 2022 @ Budapest
https://automotivexpo.hu/en/

Commercial Vehicle Show
24th – 26th May 2022 @ Birmingham
https://cvshow.com/


Hannover Fair
30th May – 2nd June 2022 @ Hannover
https://www.hannovermesse.de/en/

Wire & Tube Dusseldorf
20th – 24th – June 2022 @ Dusseldorf
https://www.wire-tradefair.com/

Installer Show21st – 23rd – June 2022 @ Birmingham
https://www.installershow.com/
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First intern welcomed to Ginho America

Amber Vold has joined Ginho America as its first intern. The appointment was made partly to support significant new automotive contract wins, and also as the company commits to a new scheme for sourcing talent.

Amber will work in a business administration manager role, while she completes her supply chain management degree at Chippewa Valley Technical College, Wisconsin. She will be involved with purchasing, logistics and the inventory of materials from Ginho’s manufacturing plant in China, along with pricing, costs, delivery and specifications of international and domestic shipments.

Amber has excellent credentials from her role as process technician with 3M, responsible for machine operation and preventive maintenance, troubleshooting, data entry, auditing and quality control, alongside training others and collaborating on new products and their process development.

Chad Hempel, Ginho America managing director, is delighted to welcome Amber to the team, commenting: “This is the first time that we have employed an intern at Ginho America. It is great to have new talent joining the business as we continue to grow and look at new ways to enhance our service to customers. I am very confident that both Amber and Ginho America will benefit from this internship.

“Looking to the future, we are collaborating with Chippewa Valley Technical College to identify the best student talent, creating an intern to hire process, potentially across many areas of the business including sales, accounting and warehousing.”

Amber added: “I am really excited about my new role at Ginho, which is enabling me to learn new ‘real world’ skills alongside completing my degree in supply chain management.”

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Exhaust specialists

Exhaust components are one of Ginho’s key specialist areas. The company produces components in a wide range of temperature-resistant alloys for many global automotive component manufacturers which are used in both passenger and commercial vehicles. All of whom have demands that need to be met in terms of cost, volumes, and durability for up to a 15-year life cycle.

Ginho’s value added value engineering at the start of a project will always look to combine components, such as cones and sensor bosses, to help customers drive down assembly time, with a keen eye on weight reduction to lessen excess material cost.

Hot stuff

Stainless steel is used for medium temperature applications and high nickel and chromium materials for high temperature applications.

The company has induction melting furnaces to offer extremely clean, low carbon content super alloy materials, which also improve weldability during the assembly process.

Ginho Europe managing director Shaun Gray is very proud of the company’s capability: “Our casting techniques and technology allow us to achieve excellent surface finish and dimensional results, providing cost effective solutions to the market and removing the need for additional process steps such as machining and fabrication.”

The components and steels manufactured by Ginho are meeting the ever-increasing OEM demands for hot end performance-related products, as the sector continues the drive to reduce emissions in line with the new Euro 7 standards being introduced in 2025.

Shaun adds: “Ginho is committed with our R&D work in material development and production techniques to meet the challenges being set by the new regulations and demands from our customers.”
For further information email [email protected].

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Ginho Europe supports Trust’s Ghana expedition

L to R Paul Gaskin, Community Engagement Manager at the Burton Albion Community Trust; Mandy Farrow, HR, Ginho Europe and Suzi Alliss, the volunteer Ginho Europe is sponsoring.

Ginho Europe is delighted to support Burton Albion Community Trust’s (BACT) expedition to Ghana by sponsoring one of the volunteers who is taking part in the challenge.

BACT is at the heart of the community of our European head office in Burton-upon-Trent in the United Kingdom. Supporting over 7,000 local people each week, BACT helps to build healthier, happier and stronger communities.

A 15-strong group of volunteers and partners is travelling to Ghana to raise funds for BACT, while supporting African Adventures’ partner projects in Ghana and providing local people with a life-changing experience.

In Ghana, BACT will be supporting Tegbi E.P School – a government-administered primary school which was founded in 1946 in Woe – with renovations of their facilities. The school provides education for 550 children between the ages of four and 20, from kindergarten up to the third (and final) year of junior high school.

Shaun Gray, Ginho Europe managing director, commented: “Burton Albion Community Trust is an amazing organisation that does so much for the local community, and we are delighted to support the team. We wish everyone all the best with the Ghana expedition and look forward to hearing all about their travels and achievements.”

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Profile: Theresa Mackay – European quality engineer

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Theresa Mackay, European Quality Engineer at Ginho Group supports International Women's Day 2022

Theresa Mackay, European Quality Engineer at Ginho Group supports International Women’s Day 2022

With 16 years’ experience across a number of different sectors, Ginho Europe’s Theresa Mackay sees International Women’s Day as an opportunity to champion women in engineering in sectors which decades ago were traditionally dominated by men, but today are providing women around the world with fantastic career opportunities.

Theresa welcomes International Women’s Day theme of #BreakTheBias, and says: “I am really fortunate to work for a progressive, inclusive business now and I really do encourage other women to pursue their dreams with confidence and to be proud of their achievements.”

Theresa started work in food retail. Then when she moved down to Nottingham from her native Glasgow, she worked for a plastics manufacturer and it was here that she quickly became fascinated with production processes, engineering and quality control.

Fast forward 16 years and she is thriving in her role as European quality engineer at the Ginho Europe, having worked in aluminium extrusion and rail freight maintenance along the way.

Ginho Europe is developing a global footprint which comprises a world class manufacturing site in China with business centres in the UK, Germany and the USA. From Ginho’s European Centre in Burton upon Trent, over five million high quality precision castings, components and assemblies are exported annually to automotive and other sector manufacturing sites across Europe.

Since joining Ginho Group in 2020, Theresa has been party to many challenges with Covid and Brexit, but the business had a record year in 2021 and has an ambitious growth target for 2022 and beyond.

Part of the senior team, Theresa’s remit is very broad running internal and external audits for customer contracts, research and development, running quality management systems, advising customers, supplier support, data analysis with some health and safety responsibilities too.

“We supply some of the world’s leading automotive brands with divisions in several continents that require consistent, just-in-time support to their local manufacturing sites. This means that quality has to be in everything! It has to run through the business. And as a result, our on-time performance, quality rating and overall customer satisfaction scorecard measures are all over 90%, including 98% for on-time delivery, but we have to be permanently ahead of the game.”

Theresa’s favourite part of the role is getting involved with new products and being part of the planning process. She says: “I love working out how we can make the part and predicting the challenges so they don’t become problems.”

This year, Theresa will be overseeing ISO 9001 for Ginho’s operation in Germany and she is hoping to go to China to visit the company’s state of the art factory, to see the manufacturing process in real life. She says: “I find our Chinese colleagues hugely respectful and helpful – and would love to see production first hand.”

Passionate about engineering and passionate about encouraging more women into the field, Theresa’s advice to any woman thinking about a career in this area is: “Go for it! I did not go down the academic route, but I would recommend it to others.” Theresa has however successfully completed numerous vocational training courses covering health and safety, ISO 9001 auditing and driving a forklift truck!

Theresa adds: “I am very lucky that at Ginho there is a very inclusive culture with a truly equitable environment that allows every member of the team to thrive, regardless of gender. And I can’t wait to see what the future holds and what we can achieve together as a team.”

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Ginho Supports International Women’s Day

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Ginho Europe is supporting International Women’s Day (8th March 2022) and celebrating the achievements of the female members of the team.

European managing director Shaun Gray has long been a champion of a more diverse and inclusive culture and is really proud of the opportunities that Ginho is providing for women:

“The automotive sector is really progressive and has been taking a lead on equitable working practices. As part of our European team, Theresa, Weiwei, Jess and Mandy bring a wealth of skills and knowledge to our business, and they all have ambitious plans to develop, as does the rest of the team.

“In my opinion, the automotive industry as a whole has made great progress in terms of diversity and inclusion – which extends to improved working conditions and the banning of unethical practices.”

“There is no bias here at Ginho and there is no barrier to progress. We actively encourage all team members to embrace personal development, to take on new responsibilities and to take advantage of training programmes that are happily funded by the company. We are now supporting Mandy, for example, through her HR qualifications.”

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