Innovative Lancashire Honda team earns trip to Brazil

A team of four representing North West Honda Motorcycles has earned a trip to Honda's Brazilian manufacturing plant to present its innovative ideas.

The team, consisting of group audit manager Barry Todd, smart fix repair manager Iain Black, motorcycle general sales manager Neil Morris and e-commerce manager Damian Brog, won the trip as part of the global motor company's Circles project.

The initiative is designed to empower employees working for various parts of the Honda Motor Corporation to identify issues within their part of the business. Once identified, teams of up to seven individuals undertake a ten-month research project that they must present to a Honda judging panel in their home country before following that with a visit to their Bloc location.

The North West Honda Motorcycles quartet became the very first dealer team to visit the New Honda Circles World Convention in Brazil after presenting their ideas at Honda's Europe-Africa-East conference in Budapest.

Their winning idea was based on plans to increase customer retention across their dealerships in Blackpool, Lancaster and Wigan.

In Sao Paulo, the team got the opportunity to visit the Honda Car Plant based inside the city with the chance to see various Circles already implemented on the production line, as well as present their own ideas.

Team Leader Barry Todd said: "It was amazing just to get the chance to be in Brazil, but to see what an incredible difference these Circles can make to operations was a real eye-opener."

The four were then invited to join a team-building exercise. Neil Morris said: "We were given the task to link up with international colleagues to build a child’s bicycle from scratch. Then the real surprise came as we were asked to present these bikes to local disadvantaged children as part of a local social project."

Iain Black added: "These children were between seven and ten and this small gesture from us was everything to them. It gave you a real sense of perspective and is something we were all really proud to be involved with."

Their final day consisted of a culture tour of Sao Paulo taking in the local Football Museum to learn the importance of football in Brazil, personified by heroes such as Pele and Ronaldo.

In 2019, the team will have it all to do once again as they first travel to Honda UK in Swindon to attempt to earn their place in the Europe-Africa-East convention to be held in Amsterdam. With the World Convention happening every two years, they will have to wait until 2020 before they can take the first of three steps that will see them in Frankfurt and another opportunity to enjoy time with their International cohorts. North West Honda Motorcycles (part of the Cox Motor Group) has branches on Lytham St Annes Way in Blackpool, the White Lund Industrial Estate in Morecambe and Challenge Way, Wigan.