TRIUMPH THAILAND FACTORY VISIT
P104
Feature
blog sites about, 'This isn't made here'
and 'This isn't made there,' but I think
what a lot of people fail to recognize is
that for every motorcycle company, this
is a global business. It's virtually impos-
sible to build any motorcycle just out of
components that are manufactured in
one country, and it certainly wouldn't be
economical to do so.
"Cost does come into it as well—look
at things like the exhaust headers, or
fuel tank assemblies we make in Factory
3 here. You couldn't possibly afford to
buy those from a UK supplier. So, you're
then left with a choice of, 'Well, do I want
to go and work with a supplier in another
country'? And then if you do, have all
of the risks of doing so, and to some
degree, less control over what that sup-
plier's doing, and whether he supplies on
time? Or do we want to invest in ourselves,
put a facility in-house ourselves, and have
our own management team looking after
it? And, by the way, also get the benefits
of learning from doing that manufactur-
ing, and being able to use that learning
to feed back into the design engineers.
So that the next time they're designing a
header system, we can say to them, 'Ah,
but did you know, actually we now have
the capability to get a tighter bend radius
on that part?' We can actually improve the
product based on the fact that we do that
ourselves, rather than passing all of that
over to somebody else."
Having now visited Triumph's Thai trio
of factories, I have to say that makes per-
fect sense. CN
(Above) A
surprising
degree of
flexibility allows
production of
models to be
shifted back
and forth
between the UK
and Thailand.
the UK.
