Smethwick engineering business benefits from 'eye-opening' Amazon visit

The Accelerator – which this year is being rolled out in six locations across the UK – provides businesses with free training and a unique behind-the-scenes look at how Amazon has scaled its operations in the UK.

Participating businesses from Greater Birmingham benefitted from in-person training workshops delivered by senior Amazon leaders, site tours and demonstrations of the latest technologies being used by the company. Businesses also benefitted from a series of virtual masterclasses about how they can create an enhanced culture of innovation within their own organisations.

“Our aim with the Amazon Innovation Accelerator is to support UK businesses to grow and create a culture of innovation within their own organisations,” said Amazon’s UK Regional Director Neil Travis. “We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from a pilot last year, and are excited to be expanding the activity this year to six locations across the UK, driving growth in businesses.”

Amazon also worked closely with the Greater Birmingham Chamber of Commerce on the design and delivery of the programme.

Henrietta Brealey, CEO of Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce, said: “SME businesses have just as much potential to be innovative and adapt to new technology as large enterprises. However, what they often lack is resource – whether that’s leadership and team time or financial investment. Innovation inherently involves being able to embrace failures.

“At the Chamber, we’re here to unleash the potential of Greater Birmingham’s businesses. That’s why we were delighted to partner with Amazon on the Amazon Innovation Accelerator.

“Over the course of the programme, I saw participants’ knowledge and confidence in how to approach innovation increase significantly. It demystified the whole process for our SMEs.”

Smethwick-based engineering service and supply company James Lister & Sons is one of the businesses that attended the accelerator in Sutton Coldfield.

The company was founded in 1874 by local schoolteacher James Lister, who opened an ironmonger’s shop in Tipton to provide a future for his three sons. James’ wife, Lucy Baker, ran the shop until James quit his job as a teacher and moved into the business full time.

Since then, James Lister & Sons has grown into one of the leading engineering companies in the Midlands, with four key engineering offerings: industrial supplies, fluid power, tube supply and manipulation and engineering services.

Rob Cotterill is Quality, Health, Safety and Environment (QEHS) Manager at James Lister & Sons. He shared their experience and encouraged others to apply for the free programme.

“James Lister & Sons started as a tool company, and over time we moved into fluid power, tube manipulation and fabrication," he said."We’re celebrating 150 years this year, and the company has stayed in the same family all those years. We try to keep these family values in everything we do.

“Our top business objective has always been to be the top independent engineering service in the Midlands,” he continued. “We pride ourselves on our customer service and try to be fast, friendly and reliable, doing everything we can for our customers as quickly as we can, while maintaining quality and a person-to-person relationship.”

Mr Cotterill recently attended the Amazon Innovation Accelerator in Sutton Coldfield.

“Our main challenge is moving forward with new technology, like AI," he said. "We’re not quite ready for that, but we’d like to be. On the tube side of the business, we’ve looked at robotics before, but it didn’t quite fit the purpose. I had a chat with someone on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) team about how we could use AWS for scheduling on machinery and things like that, which could really help our processes. We’ve got great people; and want to look at giving them the best tools that streamline processes and help them get the job done more efficiently.”

Speaking on his highlights from the Amazon Innovation Accelerator, he added: “Seeing how intentionally everything is done at Amazon was really eye opening. We heard that at Amazon ‘every day is day one’ and I learned the importance of having the right mechanisms in place.”