20,000 new workers join Sidhil...

Unprocessed honey, straight from the hive, has been used worldwide for millennia to promote healing.

Honey is one of Mother Nature’s most valuable products. Sweeter than sugar - but moderate consumption does not cause weight gain - it is also a powerful antioxidant with all the goodness of fruits and vegetables.

What’s more, it’s antibacterial and antifungal, and can be applied to the skin to remove wrinkles and imperfections! Phytonutrients found in honey have been shown to possess cancer-preventing and anti-tumour properties.

So what does this all mean to Sidhil?

Our head office premises now have another 20,000 occupants in the shape of our latest residents – honey bees, looked after by our two resident apiarists Alastair Fry and David Lewis.

Alastair and David have been interested in bees for some time now and recently attended a beekeeping course run by Halifax Beekeeping Association. When they managed to obtain their bees despite the current scarcity, it seemed logical to house the bees on our secure site – safe, happy and close to the moors of Yorkshire to help with the production of lots of heather honey!

Bees are currently undergoing a significant decline in their native population, so we are delighted to be able to make a small contribution to the protection of one of nature’s hardest workers.

There is a rumour that bees have to fly the equivalent of once round the world to make a teaspoonful of honey – that does make a day at the office seem a breeze in comparison!

And a handful of interesting bee facts:

• They navigate by using a combination of memory, visual landmarks, colours, the position of the sun, smell, polarized light and magnetic anomalies.
• They have a well developed sense of time (circadian rhythm). Honey bees are one of the very few invertebrates in which sleep-like behaviour, similar in many respects to mammalian sleep, is known to exist.
• Honey bee foragers die usually when their wings are worn out after approximately 500 miles (800 km) of flight.
• Honey bee wings beat at a constant rate of 230 beats per second or 13,800 beats/minute.
• The honey bee was a prominent political symbol in the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, representing the Bonapartist bureaucratic and political system.

Surely Alastair has been warned about smoking



















Two Bee or not Two Bees - no, lots of them



















If you don't beehave...



















That looks like it will be a little crunchy on toast



















The bee's knees














Is he making it or breaking it?



















First, build your own hive



















And here's one we prepared earlier - the hive moves in at Sidhil













Careful



















Wow, that's a lot of bees



















Don't make them angry

Behind The Scenes

You might have wondered what is involved in creating a brochure for something like the new Innov8 hospital bed - who lets us onto the ward for the photography, and how do we get the permission of the patients to take their photos?

Of course, it’s not really like that.














We don’t actually go onto the ward and take over it for a photo. Instead, we go to a photographer’s studio and build a set which looks like a ward, which can take a whole day to construct. We use models to act as nurses and patients, and spend most of a day getting the shots set up and taken.

Ok, sometimes we are able to photograph a product in real use, but like just about every single company we use a set. So the next time you see a brochure for a bathroom shower, a laptop computer or a hospital scanner, the products were almost certainly shot in a studio.

Peter Siddall Retires From BHTA

Director Peter Siddall recently retired from his involvement with the BHTA (British Healthcare Trades Association) after a commitment to the Association dating back over 30 years.

The BHTA represents large and small companies, organised in one or more sections covering most sectors of the industry, and providing a platform for all companies to have an effective voice to influence the development of healthcare policies in the UK.

When Sidhil first joined the Association back in the 1970s, the trade was becoming increasingly competitive and membership gave us an effective avenue to talk directly to government as part of a group of manufacturers. Peter was elected Chairman of the BHTA in the 1980s, and latterly served a term as a Director.

During his time with the BHTA, Peter was also instrumental in setting up a Beds section which remains an active part of the function to this day.

You're Hired

With demand growing steadily from overseas markets for our products, we recently decided to add to the senior management team with the recruitment of an experienced Export Sales Manager.

Recruiting the best people is never easy, and we were finding it hard to select the right candidate for the role, so we decided to take a different approach.

We invited 11 very able candidates with the right qualifications and excellent track records to join us for a day. Tasks set included asking the candidates to carry out presentations to the assembled group, and syndicate work debating issues and presenting their findings and results. It was a chance to hear the candidates talk about an area of their expertise and to see them in action.

We went to great lengths to make sure the session was friendly and open, and deliberately didn’t want to compare it to the Apprentice, but it’s just too tempting to use the analogy here - so, instead of announcing a firing, we’re announcing a hiring!

Thankfully Bob is better looking than Alan Sugar (but only just!).

We’re delighted to welcome Brian Zealey, who joins the team on Monday 11th May.

Red Nose Day

So, Red Nose Day was recently upon us, and of course the team at Sidhil had to participate. There was a temptation to go for some outrageous theme, but common sense prevailed and we stuck to dressing in red and wearing red noses.

Our camp photographer. Sorry David, I don't really think you're camp.



















Dig the nails.



















Who's got a shiny nose, then?



















Don't look so serious. You're doing this for fun.













Check out the hair. Someone always takes things too far.













Ok, I was wrong. THIS is too far!













At last some common sense. Phil, showing them how it is done.

The Innov8 Focus Group

For the past year we have been developing the next generation of hospital beds for the acute and private sector - the Independence Innov8. It has taken tens of 1,000s of hours of engineering time, huge amounts of analysis on computer software, and meeting after meeting planning details and options; but the most important part of all of this is when we talk to our customers about the bed.

Last week we held our final focus group, where a number of helpful customers came to Sidhil to give us their opinions. Previously, at conceptual stages, the focus group has been used to refine the basic features and function of the bed; at this late stage it is a chance for customers to see actual samples of the bed and to get their final views on specific details.

By the beginning of February all the design decisions, modelling, analysis and checking was complete. The technical specs were loaded into the laser cutter and all the metalwork cut to shape. Jigs were created, and the various pieces assembled and painted. Finally, the bed itself was assembled. All was now ready for the focus group.

On Wednesday 18th Feb we invited a selection of customers to Sidhil. After a brief welcome and presentation from James Ibbotson and Clive Siddall, the bed was unveiled and demonstrated by Alastair Fry. The response from the customers was fantastic - they seemed to love the bed, but also made several helpful suggestions for minor improvements. An example of these was to raise the monitor stand by about an inch to allow more room for equipment hung from the footend.

One of the most fantastic moments was not directly related to the bed itself. While discussing reliability and maintainability, the group got onto the topic of Service & maintenance agreements. This is another service offered by Sidhil, and the customer from Liverpool spoke up about her experiences with us. They previously used another company who frequently let them down, and so towards the end of last year they swapped to Sidhil. Since then they have had an exemplarity service, and have enjoyed total peace of mind. In fact, the customer explained that for the first time she could have a holiday safe in the knowledge that there would be no problems or crises while she was away.

Overall the event was a tremendous success, giving us a lot of reassurance that the technical team have done an excellent job creating a fantastic new product. Let’s hope that hospitals around the UK agree, and decide to buy the bed in volume.

The new bed should be available for delivery to customers in April.

The New Sidhil 2009 Catalogue

It’s taken a little while, but we’re just given birth to our brand new catalogue.

Our catalogue is very important. It’s our shop front, one of the key ways our customers can find out about our products, so it’s important to get it right.

After the success of the previous catalogue, which was well received by our customers, the 2009 catalogue had to be bigger and better.

First of all, we’ve improved the introductory pages inside the front cover. It’s easier for customers to find the product section they want, and there’s lots more information about the other services we offer, such as Service & Maintenance or Technical Support.

We’ve changed the layout of the product pages so that it’s easier to find things like accessories, product dimension, maximum user weights, and similar important information. We’ve also included diagrams showing which parts move, how far they can be moved, etc.

For the first time, we’ve even included an index!

We’re really proud of the improvements to the catalogue, and are confident that our customers are going to like it a lot. They’ll be receiving the catalogue from about 23rd Feb onwards. If you want to see it or ask about anything, have a chat with Kim Robinson in marketing.