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While trawling around the net looking for something else, I came across this snippet of inormation:

"Pershore firm provide packaging solution

Games Workshop, based in Nottingham, who are the largest and most successful manufacturer of tabletop fantasy and futuristic battle-games in the world, recently chose Pershore-based, Counting Technology Systems (CTS), to design and produce a machine to count and pack the small plastic bases that hold the individual game pieces.
More than 25 million bases made up of eight major base types are manufactured each year. Games Workshop’s previous manufacturing and packaging process associated with base components was labour intensive, with multiple base ‘picks’ required to complete a boxed product.
Having developed a more cost efficient manufacturing system, Games Workshop needed a new counting and bagging system which counted and packed the correct number of base components into bags in the correct quantities for different games. CTS developed a system which automatically feeds product, with no operator input, from mobile floor level storage bins and systematically counts the different sizes of base components into pre-programmed quantities.
“We chose CTS because not only were they very competitive on price, but we believed they would offer us more of a dedicated relationship,” said Neil Coombe, production continuous improvement manager for Games Workshop. “They made us feel valued and they are wholly committed to their customers. If we ever have a problem, even if it’s selfinflicted, someone from CTS is always on hand to help either over the phone
or on-site.”

25 million bases!  That's a lot of models.
Obviously in isolation that number isn't showing us much other than the scale of GW's business in one year, but even so this is the first hint I have seen about how many models a year GW makes, so for that alone it deserves a post.

Source of article: http://www.hwchamber.co.uk/downloads/direction/New%20Direction%2033.pdf

Nice find!

This type of article is always interesting. Just a small piece of raw data, but gives a lot of insight into how things work.

I feel like I've got that many floating around in my model area, so I'm not all THAT surprised.

Posted By Iorek on 04/04/2007 7:10 AM
I feel like I've got that many floating around in my model area, so I'm not all THAT surprised.

qft.

Yep, when I bvought 7th edition Warhammer the bases were all seperated and bagged up. No sprues. the esception being the sprue of textured bases for the troll and spider riders.

When I was a kid, I dreamt of being a production continuous improvement manager, but it was not to be.

Posted By bugswarm on 04/05/2007 1:17 PM
When I was a kid, I dreamt of being a production continuous improvement manager, but it was not to be.

Much joy you have given me, Bugswarm.

Or, to translate from Yoda to Internetsz- LOL.

Anyone else find someone at GW saying that hillarious?

No GW were saying this out of bewilderment. Looking stunned and saying to themselves. "They have the contract, and the money, aren't we supposed to get The Finger now."