Four Decades In Business
Thomas Brown Engineering was established in 1981 by our Managing Director, Tom Brown.
Tom’s vision was to offer a better, more reliable subcontract precision machining service to UK industry. A natural born problem solver, and perfectionist, Tom had served his engineering apprenticeship after leaving school and was working within the precision engineering sector. By 1982, the time was right for a new challenge, and Thomas Brown Engineering was born. Above is Tom at his very first workshop alongside his first two apprentice engineers!
Continued Growth
From these humble beginnings, Thomas Brown Engineering began to grow. Tom gradually expanded his team and soon needed a larger workshop space. The company moved into their current premises at Oldfield Street in 1990 and Tom increased his investments in new CNC machinery to cope with the demand of a growing order book.
The foundation of Tom’s early vision to offer a better, more reliable solution to the subcontracting needs of UK industry, continued to shape the direction and focus of the growing company and Thomas Brown Engineering gained recognition with the quality approval ISO9001.
The next few years saw a large extension to the workshop premises as the team continued to grow. Our Production Manager, Gavin, joined the team in 1995 as a CNC Miller and was joined a few years later by Rowland, who is today our Technical Manager. This period also saw Tom’s son Lee, join the business as an apprentice engineer and later Tom’s daughter, Deneale, who is today our Company Secretary.
A commitment to offering quality to our customers and investment in the latest machinery, tooling, software and technological developments has been key to the success of the company. More so, however, has been Tom’s dedication to his team. Our team members have ensured the continued success of our company. Together we have earned our company the reputation of being a forward thinking, reliable partner to our clients; we interact with each other, our customers and our suppliers with honesty, respect and integrity. Pictured here, Tom Brown.
Where we are today
Our focus on continuous improvement coupled with a commitment to the needs of our customers and our team, has seen a continuation of steady growth and success. 2015 proved to be an important year as we gained the aerospace quality approval AS9100. This marked an important step on our journey to becoming a trusted partner within the aerospace sector.
We have continued to invest and improve and have seen the benefits of investing in state of the art CNC machinery, including two impressive Nakamura twin spindle, twin turret machines. 2018 saw a fantastic addition to our 5 axis capability, a brand new Mikron Mill E 500 U machine. Most recently in January 2022, we took delivery of a Brother Speedio multi-tasking machining centre, complete with robot loading system.
Today we deliver our continuous improvements through our 2 second lean programme and our focus on lights out machining. We are also excited to be now making use of a new extension to our manufacturing premises which will increase our floor space by 4,000 square foot.
2022 As we celebrate our 40th year in business, we continue to work together as a family and as a team to support our customers and each other. In this way we can say that today Thomas Brown Engineering, still headed by our MD Tom Brown, has never been better.
The vision for his company that Tom saw 40 years ago is alive and well today and we look to the future with passion and optimism for continued success and growth.
2023 Pictured here receiving our Eaton Smith Business of the Year Award 3rd Place at the John Smiths Stadium.
