An industrial equipment maker builds machines to order for factories: fabricated frames, bought-in motors and drives, and wiring and commissioning on site. The people problem is mixed trades, uneven order flow and know-how held by a few.
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Share your requirementsAn industrial equipment manufacturer designs and builds machines such as mixers, dryers, conveyors, presses and process lines, mostly to a customer order. A job moves from drawing office to fabrication, machining, painting, mechanical assembly, electrical wiring and testing, and then to dispatch and commissioning at the customer's site. Each machine differs a little, so the shop floor works from drawings and notes, not from repeated routines. Different trades must meet at the right time, and when one stage slips the others wait. Order flow is lumpy, with a rush before a customer's shutdown. Skilled fitters, wiremen and commissioning engineers are few. See also HR for manufacturing.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in industrial equipment manufacturers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Fitters and wiremen interpret drawings differently, and unrecorded changes live in people's heads.
Drawing errors and late revisions are found on the shop floor, and blame moves between offices.
Fabrication runs late, assembly idles and then overtime erupts, with the cost falling on whoever is last.
A cluster of deliveries before a customer shutdown triggers extra hours without rules.
A handful of engineers go to site, and a visit that fails costs goodwill.
Experienced fitters know how to fix design gaps, but nobody records it.
Motors, drives and bearings arrive late and stall assembly, and the fitter is blamed.
Daily hands are brought in at peak and leave afterwards, taking learning with them.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Organisation Design; Learning and Development; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a industrial equipment manufacturers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A short meeting per job where the designer explains risks to the shop leads, with questions noted and closed.
A short meeting per job where the designer explains risks to the shop leads, with questions noted and closed.
A visible board showing each stage, delay cause and owner, so waiting is seen and discussed on time.
A visible board showing each stage, delay cause and owner, so waiting is seen and discussed on time.
A one-page note after each job on what was changed on the floor and why, so the next team starts better.
A one-page note after each job on what was changed on the floor and why, so the next team starts better.
A fair rota, a record of hours and a way to claim, aligned with the attendance and shift process.
A fair rota, a record of hours and a way to claim, aligned with the attendance and shift process.
Paired visits to site and a sign-off before solo work, in line with learning and development.
Paired visits to site and a sign-off before solo work, in line with learning and development.
A short induction on safety, tools and the job, and a record of who worked on which machine, under health, safety and wellbeing.
A short induction on safety, tools and the job, and a record of who worked on which machine, under health, safety and wellbeing.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Paired learning for fitters, wiremen and commissioning engineers.
Overtime, site stints and leave records for order-based work.
Routines for lifting, welding, wiring and site safety.
Trade testing and referencing for scarce fitters and engineers.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator often struggles as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to building job grades, titles and billing levels for a growing IT services firm, with a step-by-step method and a grade description outline.
6 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
9 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Look ahead at the order book, rotate overtime, set a rule and record hours. Predictable extra work is easier to accept than sudden demands.
Hold a short handover per job, give shop leads early sight of drawings and record questions. Errors found early are cheap.
Give a visible grade, a say in design reviews and pay that reflects the know-how. They leave when their fixes are not recognised.
Give the same safety brief and tools as regular staff, note who worked where and keep attendance. Confirm engagement terms with a qualified professional.
Send them as a second person on three or four site visits, record what they handled and sign off before a solo visit.
We would ask how design reaches the floor, who can commission your main machine and how peaks are staffed. A good first piece of work is a job handover routine and a commissioning ladder. Scope is agreed in writing after we talk.
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