Tom led the engineering delivery of a phased yard ramp redesign programme, reducing steel usage, improving product economics, and introducing new models to strengthen the overall range.
Phase 0
Materials handling
Range rationalisation
Cost and weight reduction
A 6 tonne type 10 yard ramp developed as part of the wider range rationalisation programme.
Between 2002 and 2005, steel prices more than doubled and showed no sign of easing. At the same time, lower-cost imported alternatives began appearing in the market, increasing price pressure and steadily eroding margin on fabricated steel products.
For Thorworld’s mobile yard ramps, this created a serious commercial challenge. If the range could not be re-engineered to a lower cost base, it would become increasingly difficult to justify UK manufacture while remaining competitive.
The problem was to reset the product specification and cost structure so the range could remain UK-built, commercially viable, and still meet the safety and performance expectations the market relied on.
That meant stepping back from isolated design tweaks and treating the ramps as a product family: understanding what truly drove cost and weight, what could change without undermining function, and what needed to remain fixed to preserve acceptance criteria and customer confidence.
Competitive cost pressure: material cost inflation and import competition demanded a step change in cost base, not marginal savings.
UK manufacturability: the range needed to remain buildable in-house using existing fabrication capability and realistic shop-floor processes.
Performance and safety: ramps had to preserve load capacity, stiffness, and operational robustness in real loading environments.
Substantiation requirements: designs had to be checked to EN 1398 and BS 5950, supported by CAE substantiation and physical type testing.
Range continuity: changes needed to improve the core type 6 and 7 products while also creating a coherent basis for later variants.
Thorworld Industries
Lead Design Engineer
2005–2009
Range re-specification +
Product redesign +
New product variants
EN 1398 / BS 5950 +
CAE substantiation +
Physical type testing
One of the earlier yard ramp designs at the start of the programme. The range had originally been developed with external structural engineering input, at a time when material cost pressure was less acute.
Rapid rises in steel prices, along with low-quality but cheap imports, created serious margin pressure across fabricated products, making targeted product redesign a commercial necessity.
Design development and physical type testing formed part of the optimisation work, helping validate lighter and more efficient ramp designs before release.
Phase 1 focused on structural optimisation to reduce steel usage by weight. Phase 2 explored additional cost-saving routes through functional cost analysis. Phase 3 introduced new designs based on previous learnings.
The broader ramp range developed through the programme, with products more clearly aligned to utilisation class whilst retaining the core functional purposes of the original range.
The work improved the overall quality and breadth of the ramp range, while also restoring more sustainable margins and helping retain UK manufacture in the face of cheaper imports.
The programme first optimised the existing high-volume ramps (types 6 and 7), then delivered entirely new designs (types 8, 9 and 10) between 2007 and 2009. Across the refreshed range, weight — and therefore steel cost — was materially reduced while maintaining the functional performance and acceptance basis the product category depended on.
Practically, this enabled Thorworld to offer a broader set of ramp variants and capacities, reduce selling prices, restore margin to more sustainable levels, and increase throughput by making the ramps faster and more consistent to manufacture.
The work re-established a viable cost base for a flagship product family during a period when many fabricated-product businesses were being squeezed by material inflation and aggressive imports.
By preserving standards-led acceptance and real-world robustness while materially improving product economics, the ramp range remained commercially defensible through the subsequent downturn and provided a platform for continued product-line expansion rather than contraction.
The work was seen internally as highly valuable because it delivered substantial reductions in steel content and build effort during a period when all UK steel fabricators were suffering material and other cost pressures. It also provided a structured basis for change — combining specification reset, costed options, DFMA iteration, substantiation, and type testing — rather than relying on isolated redesign decisions.
Based on recollections from the time
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