This book presents research concerned with the origins, growth and performance of UK Ball and Roller Bearings manufacture in its international setting with particular reference to the major reorganization of the national industry in 1970 with the formation of Ransome Hoffman Pollard Limited from the three main British-owned companies which constitute its name. |
| Within the above overall study the development of the Rolling Bearings Industry in the UK, circa 1900 to date is considered, with reference to its economic and technological linkages within the engineering sector as a whole. However, the detail of the work is concerned with the events leading to the formation of Ransome Hoffman Pollard Limited: “What” economic and organizational change occurred; “Why” the change occurred: and “How” it occurred. Further, a critical appraisal is made of the benefits of this merger by looking at the operations and performance of Ransome Hoffman Pollard Limited since 1970. The method of assessment being to consider the benefits of rationalisation and ‘economies of scale’; performance vis à vis constituent companies prior to merger; vis à vis competitors in the domestic market {SKF(UK) Limited}; vis à vis competitors in the international market (particularly from Japanese industry); and future longer term prospects for Ransome Hoffman Pollard Limited. |
| The Rolling Bearings Industry developed in somewhat of a piecemeal fashion. Companies often originated with the efforts of an individuals engineer/entrepreneur (for example, Hoffman); grew out of the need of a company engaged in another activity to supply its own inputs (for example, Ransome and Marles); or the need to supply a particular specialized market (for example, British Timken). The industry continued to grow but followed the same pattern because of the corresponding nature of the development of the market for bearings, the structure and organization of British Industry as a whole and the nature of British export markets. Consequently, like so many major industries of basic but of vital importance to the British economy the Rolling Bearings Industry emerged after World war II with too many companies with below-optimum manufacturing units (in this case, producing an overlapping and excessive range of bearings in too short runs); slow growth in traditional export markets; drop-off in domestic markets represented by declining staple industries; faced with increasing competition from foreign manufacturers (particularly alarming in the home market); a failure to diversify sufficiently rapidly into more specialized products; and potential investment funds dispersed due to fragmentation of the Industry. |
| The formation of Ransome Hoffman Pollard Limited has meant that the British Rolling Bearings Industry is better placed (in production capacity, efficiency, financial terms, overall organisation and bargaining power) to withstand and react against Japanese and other competition in the home market and overseas, as well as expand sales in general. |
| The UK Government now holds no financial interest in Ransome Hoffman Pollard Limited. However, this sector provided a good example of what sensible and well-planned government involvement in Industry can produce. In the present-day, with vast and sophisticated national (and international) economies some degree of state intervention is almost inevitable and for many reasons, many of which are obvious (but which are not gone into in too much detail with the context of this research) and to some extent, desirable. The limited and to a large degree “arms-length” involvement in the Bearings Industry by the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation as an arm of British Government industrial policy using market mechanisms, demonstrates how beneficial the result of this activity can be without the necessity of producing monetary Molochs.