Alnwick manufacturing specialist MSP celebrates milestone

Over the past two decades, MSP has contributed to the advancement of the global manufacturing industry through the creation of its innovative products.

MSP was founded in 2002 by Tony Brown, MSP’s commercial director, and Peter Hammond, technical director, who retired in 2021.

During their previous careers in software development and mechanical engineering, both had witnessed engineers struggling to fix part errors that were being identified during final inspection – when it was too late to correct the issue.

They recognised that these part errors were being introduced by either the machine or the part set-up process.

As Tony explains: “This was the ‘Eureka!’ moment that spurred the invention of MSP. Why were manufacturers struggling to create good parts, when the errors causing the problems could be removed?

“The risk of them having a detrimental effect on finished parts would be eliminated”.

Since this moment, it has been MSP’s mission to remove all errors from the part production process so manufacturers can have the confidence they will produce right-first-time parts, every time.

The innovative nature of their products is such that one of their very first commissions was for BAE Systems on their Eurofighter Typhoon programme. They went on to save the company £20m over five years.

Always striving to be the most innovative in their field, MSP launched a new product in 2021 which is the first of its kind for the manufacturing market.

AutoClock is the first product to automate the probe setup and calibration process, removing errors at this stage of the manufacturing process.

MSP, which has been based in Alnwick since the beginning and is now at Greensfield Court, has had success in multiple industries such as aerospace, defence, motorsport and marine, winning clients including BAE Systems and major Formula 1 teams.

Tony says: “When we first created MSP, we wouldn’t have believed that our products would be capable of saving BAE Systems £20 million over the lifetime of the Eurofighter programme or saving a top F1 team 9.5 hours in part setup time on every part made.

"I’m proud of everything we’ve achieved and would like to thank the team, past and present, that’s got us this far and continue to help us with our mission of removing errors from manufacturing processes”.

Throughout its history, the company has been involved with many initiatives to promote STEM subjects across the North East to encourage young people to explore a career within manufacturing and/or the STEM subjects.

This includes sponsoring students from Duchess’s Community High School through a company bursary scheme, through industrial cadet programmes or Greenpower car competitions.

They have also recently worked with Newcastle College to develop a new Engineering with Applied Digital Technologies foundation degree. The revolutionary course was designed to give its participants the practical skills needed to join the industry and help create a future generation of digitally-enabled engineers.

MSP is an associate company of world leading engineering and scientific technology company, Renishaw.