As part of our operations management class, we’ve been visiting factories around the UK to see how the principles we’ve studied in class are applied in practice. I chose to visit LTI, manufacturer of the iconic London taxi, whilst other factories visited included Ford, Domino Printing and Marshall Industries.

LTI is a niche carmaker, employing over 450 people to hand make 2,800 taxis annually. Although I don’t intend on working in manufacturing on graduation, the factory tour was insightful as many operations management theories (six sigma, lean manufacturing, etc) can be applied to supply chains, warehousing and the service sector.

We now have to write a 2,000 word assignment on the extent to which knowledge about an operation can be derived from a single plant tour. Not the most riveting assignment of the course! Still, the factory tour was good fun and informative.