Winners of Lions' Lair

The competition, which took place on 24th March at the NEC, saw four courageous competitors pitch their most pioneering products to a panel of maintenance experts.

The panel of Lions (judges) included: Simon O’Rouke, maintenance team leader at Siemens; Elaine McAdam, engineering services team leader at William Grant & Sons; and Nqabeni Hlongwane facilities engineer and consultant.  

MCP Consulting and Training pitched its Manufacturing Cost Improvement Programme. With more than 1400 food and drink manufacturers at risk of collapse by the end of 2014, due to the brutal price war between Britain's major supermarkets, this innovation could be a potential life saver. The programme finds opportunities for improvement and therefore cost savings across production, planning, warehousing and engineering in just 10 to 12 weeks. It uses data from more than 700 food manufacturing assessments.

On winning the Lions’ Lair accolade, John Saysell, head of technical training and business development at MCP Consulting and Training commented: "The price war is a massive issue within the food and drink industry at the moment and more companies are going to go bust unless they look at their manufacturing processes. It was fantastic to see that the audience agreed with us, because we beat three tangible products with our service. Overall the Lions’ Lair was a great experience.”

Also victorious in the Lair was TPI Europe, with its new product, the VibRanger online vibration analyser and condition monitoring system.  It adds to the already established handheld vibration analysis products, combining high performance vibration analysis with various modes of reporting, from simple digital alarms through to comprehensive PC and Cloud based software.

Dr Russ Sion, MD at TPI Europe, commented: "The Lions’ Lair is always great fun to take part in. This year’s competition turned out to be a fantastic networking opportunity for my company; through it I am now in talks with a business that I don’t think I would have met, had it not been for the Lions’ Lair. So it was well worth taking part.”

The two other companies who battled it out for the show’s top accolade were Alpine Components and Eurotech.