Meet The Maker: Mark Brixton
Job title: Dye Services Associate aka The Master MixerTime at Milliken: 13 months.
Role: Although relatively new to Milliken, Mark makes up a core part of our dye service team. Mark is responsible for the manufacture of all dyes that are used in our proprietary Militron® technology. This quality critical role requires a high degree of attention to detail as well as being able to manage multiple colourways under tight deadlines to help support our 10 day quick ship programme.
What I like about Milliken: I love the shop floor camaraderie. I love working with people, solving problems and generally working for a living. And the consistency: I know where I am, I know what I’m doing in 2 to 3 months’ time, I know who I’m working with. The convenience of where it is so it gives me more time at home: my work, home, life balance is perfect. It’s a nice clean place to work, organised well. There’s no surprises.
Mission: I’m getting to the stage now where I can start to make a difference, as far as I can go on the shopfloor and help my teammates that’s my goal.
100 years of making in the UK: The security is one of the big reasons I moved here. In the area we all know people who work here and all know it’s a good place to work.
Passions: Golf and my dog: a West Ireland White, 2 years old. I travel all over the North West playing golf. I like the competition, you never master it and always want to get better.
Dream installation: As I have a Jaguar I’d love to walk into a really nice Jaguar showroom and see Milliken carpet installed there. But anywhere, walking into a newsagent or somewhere like that it would make an improvement – I’d feel proud. I take great pride in our product and anyone who buys it is helping us down the line.
Musical motivation: 60’s Upbeat. Something that will lift you up. I’ve got a boom box and they all beg me to bring it in. The music makes morale much, much better.
Best thing about Wigan: I was born in Wigan then mum moved down south where I grew up. I’ve been back in Wigan for 30 years. The people are the best thing about Wigan, oh and the house prices.
Biggest achievements: Achieving so much before in my work life and then being willing to stop and totally start again at the age of 50. It was the best decision I made and I feel if I hadn’t done that I would still be doing what I was doing and I was unhappy so my biggest achievement was having the guts to make the decision and make the change.
My family. I’m also proud to have instilled our children with a strong work ethic.
Opportunities: After being made redundant I took a job in Huddersfield about 2 hours each way. I had a very good job, but did 12 hour shifts, 15 hour days. So I decided if an opportunity came up I would start again from the bottom and work my way up. It seemed like a great opportunity to build up and already I’m on my 3rd job now and just learned my 4th job today, so I’m nearly half way now in just 13 months. Milliken can see if it’s in you or not, they bring you on. The team leaders help immensely, they know who’s working well on their shift and they know who can help even more.
Teamwork: There’s a really strong sense of teamwork amongst different groups and helping your comrades out.
On delivering a premium quality product: There needs to be attention to detail and quality every step of the way, any kind of variation and one tile will be a different colour to another. We have 3 checking processes all together. The first job that you start with is inspecting and then it’s bred into you to spot any slight fault on a carpet tile you take it out and you make some more. I take pride in what I do daily.
Interested in meeting more of our Makers? Stay tuned to read The Patterning Story Part 2, featuring Steve Ainscough .
