New Operations Director

Kenard Dartford has appointed former Hitachi Seiki project manager Matt Cornford as operations Director.

Matt brings a broad industry experience in production, application and systems engineering having held project manager positions at Hitachi seiki (UK) of Egham and then at Fred K Pollard and Co of Leicester, following the amalgamation of those two businesses. His brief is to increase the variety of work passing through the Dartford machining facility of the Group.

According to Ray Ellis, Managing Director of the Kenard Group, Matt’s experience, which stated with a machine tool apprenticeship with KTM in Brighton, where he progressed to Manufacturing Systems consultant until the business closed in 1994. This experience makes him ideal to run the day to day business of Kenard. He takes responsibility to co-ordinate quality, production and productivity issues and has been briefed to build on the company’s highly successful supply chain management and project management capability with customers.

Kenard employs 50 people at its Dartford facility for which 50% of the business is directed to one aerospace customer producing high value components. These are produced from the likes of titanium and nimonics and are required to meet ultra precision tolerances and surface finish requirements. The other half of the business supplies subsea, telecomms, oil and gas, autosport, transmission and pump sectors. Indeed, one recent close customer relationship project involved Kenard in the complete project management of prototype development on a special large capacity pump.

This type of business is becoming a growth business for Kenard which means the company is handling a greater variety of work in small batches involving extensive production and application expertise and involving the co-ordination of very specialised subcontract processes. ‘This area will be a major focus for our business and where we expect Matt Cornford to apply his experience,’ says Ellis.