Solartron Mobrey was born of the merger of Mobrey Group whose primary business was the measurement of level and the Solartron Group that made laboratory instrumentation, flow measurement and data acquisition equipment. The merged group is part of the Cambridge-based Roxboro Group.
"I cannot think of an industry where we wouldn't have a bit of kit somewhere," says Solartron's , production engineering manager Richard Canham. "What we make is typically used in the petrochemical industry, looking at flows where it is important to know how much material is moving through a pipe... We work with any application where you need to measure the levels of such things as sand, slurry, sludge and cement. Our equipment is used in a lot of heavy process plants, refrigeration plants, food plants, pharmaceutical plants, general industrial facilities and municipal waterworks. Boiler houses measuring that water is to the correct level... Marine applications - ship's boilers and tank levels on oil tankers - there are so many."
Importantly customers' requirements are changing ever more rapidly and that is why the key to the company's culture is flexibility in meeting those needs. The route to achieving this is through openness and communication explains Canham.
"We have set up our manufacturing facility to be as flexible as the marketplace. We are heavily focused on cellular manufacturing. Our shop floor is like a series of 16 mini factories or manufacturing cells and within each cell they are concerned with the assembly and testing and packing in most instances of a discrete product or group of products..."
"In each cell," continues Canham, "is located all the tools, test equipment and all the stock required to build, test and pack a product ready for the warehouse. We try to make sure that these cells are flexible enough to cope with the demands of the outside market."
But it is not just on the shop floor where flexibility is reflected in the way the building is used. "If you walk into our facility, there has to be a wall between the office areas and the manufacturing areas but we made that wall glass so everybody can see everybody else in the facility. There is no hiding place. There are no brick walls. Nobody actually sits in an office - it is all open plan. There are rooms available where people can go and work but nobody has an office per se."
Canham does not claim that Solartron's approach or the configuration and use of its building is rocket science. But inside the up-to-date SEGRO industrial building, the company is able to cultivate best business practice working methods that get people working together cross-functionally.
"A consultant would call it natural groups," says Canham. "People from different disciplines working together on one project, or concentrating on a process... We try and let people have as much control over their immediate environment as possible especially on the shop floor."
So 158 Edinburgh Avenue expresses through its construction and configuration the purpose of Solartron Mobrey's business and the company's business culture. It is a formula that works. And it is also part of an increasing trend in contemporary industrial property where buildings are an integral part of what a business is about and a tangible representation of how a company goes about achieving its goals in meeting the needs of its market.