Some 31 of us made our way to the JCB Headquarters which is approximately 1 hour's drive for our Derbyshire based members (we also have some members in Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire but that's another story - they joined Derbyshire because we are such nice people!).
The day started with coffee and biscuits before being split into two groups of 15'ish each. We then went into the theatre to watch a safety film and a brief introduction to the company.
It was then upstairs to the 'JCB Story', which shows the history of the company through storyboards and examples of the diggers throughout the years. It is a massive area as (hopefully) the accompanying photos will show. The pictures below show some of us trying out the full size model of the cockpit ("cab?") if that's the correct description. It was interesting to see the use of the computers and screens used to control the diggers. A far cry from some of the early examples also present.
JCB are well known for adorning their company vehicles with personalised JCB number plates, of which they now have over 400. THe first 10 'JCB' plates came from a fleet of scooters, pre-registered by a dealer in Southend which were swiftly purchased by JCB and the registration numbers transferred to company vehicles. The scooters were then sold off to members of staff (less the number plates!). See photo.
In this area we also saw the 'JCB Diesel Max' car which holds the world landspeed record for diesel cars at 328 mph, set in 2006 by Wing Commander Andy Green (also of Thrust World speed record holder fame).
From there we went down on to the production line - well it's actually 2 production lines running in parallel. Cameras were not allowed in the production area unfortunately, so I can't show you what it looks like but we did walk through the entire production process from metal stamping to paint (well, not inside the paint shop itself!) on to final inspection.
We had been to Morgan only 10 days earlier (see separate article) and most of the attendees today had also visited Morgan. The comparisons between the 2 factories was very thought provoking.
We finished the tour in the gift shop where Rita attempted to buy up most of the available merchandise, followed by lunch on site in the JCB visitor restaurant. We were looked after very well by all the JCB staff.
Our thanks again go to Glyn and Rita for organising.
Photo's: Nigel Mitchell, Hartley Jenkinson
