One major automotive supplier who specifies Stokes Forgings is Koyo Bearings Europe Ltd.

Koyo's customers require hourly just in time deliveries of complete hub units for the assembly lines of Toyota, General Motors and Daimler Chrysler.

Stokes Forgings forge, heat treat, magnetic particle inspect and deliver hub forgings into the machining lines at Koyo Bearings Europe, where they are machined and sub-assembled into inner and outer bearing units.

These are then assembled into complete hubs ready to be fitted to suspension units on their customers assembly lines.

Initially, Stokes Forgings was approached to be a back up supplier - but our quality and service soon elevated us to the position of supplier of choice to Koyo Bearings Europe.

MALCOLM SHAW, Koyo Bearings Europe Vice President comments "...today, all of our local supply of forgings are supplied by Stokes Forgings - that business is growing and will grow further based on true partnership, reaction to our needs, understanding of our needs, applying their technology and innovation to improve our product and the product which we send to our customers."

In June 2005, Stokes Group Limited was delighted to welcome back Sir Digby Jones (CBI's Director-General) who was touring various businesses in the Black Country, prior to the CBI Summer Banquet.

Sir Digby last visited Stokes in early 2004, when he officially launched a £1.4 Million investment in two additional press lines, state-of-the-art die and tool making facilities, and a new total business management IT system. This level of investment, unprecedented in the UK forging sector, was seen as essential by Stokes, in order to continue its drive for increased efficiency to improve productivity, and underpin its progress from the leading UK automotive forge, to a force to be reckoned with in Europe.

Alongside such investments in new facilities, Stokes has continued to invest in its people, in continuous improvement and in developing new technical solutions. During his visit, Digby spent some time congratulating the technical and operations team from Stokes Group’s hammer forging operations in Dudley, who recently won an award for technical excellence.

The genesis of this award was an earlier successful collaboration between Delphi Energy and Chassis Systems, a division of one of the leading Tier 1 global automotive suppliers, and Stokes, on a revolutionary new braking system. Stokes’ task was to design and develop a new forged component which would replace the functionality previously generated by some 13 pressed and cast parts, and fasteners. Success in this resulted both in Stokes being awarded the Acheson Forging of the Year Award for 2001, and in the company’s continued involvement in technical project development.

In December 2003 Stokes were called on again to assist with the development of two highly complex suspension knuckle components with particular stiffness requirements and geometries. This time Stokes Forgings Dudley took the lead role due to their long standing reputation and capability in producing highly complex parts.

The timescales available to Dudley to produce sample parts was drastically reduced, however, Stokes Forgings has long recognized speed of response as a key success factor, and prides itself on its rapid "art to part" capability. Matching this capability with their characteristic "can-do" attitude, Dudley’s engineering and technical team brainstormed various options before deciding, in close collaboration with Hitachi Tooling, to implement a completely new tooling set up which allowed them to cut some 20% off the normal production lead times.

This project was nominated for the International Institute of Forging Technology’s Annual Award, and were worthy winners. Stokes Group Chairman Esther Horwood commented, "I am delighted that the hard work, technical expertise and 100% commitment to meeting customers expectations exhibited by the engineering and operational teams at Dudley has been recognized by this award."

"Like many other automotive suppliers in the West Midlands, Stokes Group has been affected, to an extent by the demise of MG Rover. It is initiatives such as this, which have enabled us to move on, and to win and build accounts with key global automotive suppliers."

(l-r) Sir Digby (2nd left) pictured with Nigel Reece, Stuart Brownhill and Jim Dixon, from Stokes’ Technical & Operations team showing off the award winning forgings.
This article first appeared in the Autumn 2005 edition of CBI West Midlands "Inbusiness" magazine.