SAY Unipart and many people think of a car parts company - but there's much more to it than shiny new exhausts.

In little more than 12 years, its sphere of influence has expanded from car components to a group providing storage and distribution to industries as diverse as defence and information technology, mobile communications to healthcare.

Its companies market and distribute caravan, camping, marine parts and accessories, supply rolling stock and signalling equipment to the rail industry, and provide a full corporate security service.

Even with the challenges presented by a strong pound and a tough trading atmosphere, the company's turnover regularly tops £1bn a year. The route taken by the company to produce results such as these is no better illustrated than the short walk from the gleaming reception of the group's headquarters at Cowley, Oxford, into Unipart's own corporate university, the Unipart U.

From there it is an even shorter step into a fully equipped and professionally staffed fitness centre and country house-style aromatherapy suite.

The word stakeholder was firmly entrenched among Unipart workers long before it became a buzzword of New Labour.

The physical manifestation of the company's commitment to the well-being of its employees is impressive.

The company, now one of Europe's biggest privately held component makers, was created in 1987. Since then it has joined the vanguard of firms that regard themselves as learning organisations.

That focus has been apparent since 1993, when it launched the Unipart U. Last year, its Faculty on the Floor programme extended the Cowley-based university to shopfloor level in production plants and distribution centres across the country, saving time and enabling continuous learning.

Group chief executive John Neill said the Faculty on the Floor was about learning at the speed of light. People were intrigued when the company launched the Unipart U and coined the phrase "learn in the morning, do in the afternoon".

Companies who have visited Unipart's headquarters - and there have been thousands over the years - have been inspired to emulate the company's working philosophy. And that has caused a dilemma. Director of corporate affairs Frank Nigriello says: "Often at the end of a tour, which in some cases can take a day, people ask how we achieve what we are doing here. And I have been telling them: 'Simply go and do it'.

"That clearly wasn't enough. We realised that we needed some way of capturing what we had accomplished in a way that could be passed to others.

"So we formed a small team to look at our learning systems and see how best we could pass on that information." The result is a new multimedia training package aimed at helping companies introduce continuous improvement to boost productivity and reduce costs. It will be launched later this month.

The CD-ROM - called Making Sustainable Change - is designed to provide a step-by-step guide for managers seeking to introduce improvement programmes such as kaizen, the Japanese style of fast-paced, breakthrough activity.

Mr Nigriello says the four-hour programme, designed in conjunction with Aylesbury-based people development group AdVal, is based on a tried and tested interactive learning process using video, audio, text and graphics. He adds: "People want to manage change so that they can improve the bottom line. We are not a charity so this programme had to be a commercial proposition.

"We recognised that this was unexplored territory. There weren't many multimedia products around that attempted to deal with such a large and comprehensive range of business issues.

"The learning designers at AdVal studied the problem with us. They put an incredible amount of skill and creativity into interpreting the ideas into a multimedia training programme. Both companies learned a tremendous amount in the process.

"The product is unusual in that it also has a focus on the 'soft' aspects of change - such as how employees react to change. It also features extensive material that deals with how to communicate change, an area sometimes overlooked in change management training pro- grammes." Ian Phillips, who heads AdVal's publishing business, says: "When we first met the team from Unipart Advanced Learning Systems, we were impressed by their enthusiasm and knowledge about learning in business.

"It was clear to us that Unipart had actually achieved what so many other companies had merely aspired to.

"Through using learning tools, the Unipart consultants were helping a wide range of companies to achieve huge quantifiable improvements in their processes."

The programme is the first in a series of training products and seminars aimed at improving business performance which will be produced by Unipart and AdVal.

Prof Dan Jones of the Cardiff Business School, who co-authored the books The Machine That Changed the World and Lean Thinking, has seen the programme and given his approval. He says: "Unipart has been at the forefront of continuous improvement for many years. Its depth of experience and know-how in implementing and sustaining lean principles has been well translated into this easily accessible learning tool.

"I believe that Making Sustainable Change is an excellent primer for any company seeking to introduce continuous im- provement programmes that will really make a difference to their bottom line. I'd highly recommend it."

- Making Sustainable Change will be available from February 28. It costs £950 plus VAT. A free demonstration disc, with a diagnostic tool to evaluate an organisation's needs, will be available from February 14. Contact AdVal on 01296 334343 for more information.

Story date: Wednesday 16 February

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.