在格洛斯特这个拥有大教堂的英格兰城市，莫里斯•克里奇利（Maurice Critchley）在他的大型工厂漫步时停下来和一些生产工人谈话，轻松记得他们的名字。不过，这些礼仪背后是有目的的：克里奇利表示，熟悉员工并体面地对待他们，帮助他把Severn Glocon打造成油气行业“安全关键”阀门的世界领先制造商之一。
不管是外表还是气质，克里奇利看上去都是一名英国绅士的典范。现年63岁的克里奇利穿着剪裁得当的西装，打着领带，高高瘦瘦，声音清晰，很少提高音量。“我猜你可以说我展现了英国式的淡定。”
Severn Glocon经营的工业阀门行业与克里奇利的另一项特点相得益彰：极端重视细节。
作为这家公司的所有者和董事总经理，克里奇利表示：“我们有些阀门需要连续工作（不管是用在炼油厂还是海底的设备上）30年，期间不能出一点差错。如果做不到这一点，就可能出人命。”引发2010年“深水地平线”（Deepwater Horizon）钻井平台灾难的正是设备失灵，包括一些涉及安全关键阀门的问题，那些阀门不是Severn Glocon制造的。那次灾难导致11人遇难，可能使英国石油（BP）付出370亿美元的代价。
尽管礼貌待人、倾听他人的行为本身无关生死，但克里奇利指出，正是他在1996年和一名雇员的一次偶然谈话，推动了Severn Glocon的巨变，当时他已进入阀门生产领域7年。
他说：“有次夜班时我在（工厂），和一位机床操作工聊了起来。他告诉我，本地有家公司产能过剩，我可能感兴趣。”
这家公司是业绩欠佳的英国工业集团BTR的阀门部门。这笔收购交易花了200万英镑，通过一笔银行贷款融资。Severn Glocon由此获得了一系列面向油气行业的新产品，也使克里奇利面临一个全新行业的挑战，此前Severn Glocon的产品主要面向化工领域。
他说：“我认识到，如果我们收购了（BTR的这个部门），会出现真正的转折点。这笔收购不仅为我们添加了新的生产业务，还使我们与关键客户建立起联系，尤其是沙特阿拉伯和阿布扎比的国营石油公司，这在后来证明是极为重要的。”
目前油气行业占Severn Glocon销售额的80%，预计今年的总销售额将达1亿英镑。
作为缝隙行业的一家专业生产商（类似产品的其它大型制造商均为规模大得多的企业的一部分，如美国的福斯（Flowserve）和艾默生（Emerson）），Severn Glocon在某种程度上免受新兴经济体低成本生产竞争的冲击。但克里奇利相对较早地决定，该公司应该利用海外较低的成本优势。这样，它就成了一家“微型跨国公司”——即规模相对较小但在全球生产、销售并植根于英国的公司。
Seven Glocon制造业务的四分之一在印度，其在金奈的工厂已有约10年历史，其余产能在英国。今年Severn Glocon的收入中，约有85%来自英国以外的市场，最大的市场包括沙特、中国和澳大利亚。
克里奇利以他特有的谦虚方式担当英国工业的啦啦队长。他说：“英国在制造和工程方面有很多优势。我们讲的是世界语，英国产品的质量拥有卓越声誉。英国人相互尊重的传统也依然是重要的。”
克里奇利生长在格洛斯特附近的西南部小镇Stroud。他本想上大学学习经济学，但没有达到入学资格，于是17岁时离开学校，接受了会计师培训。随后在工业界从事过一系列管理工作，包括英国食品配料公司Spillers以及美国化工集团Mallinckrodt。
接着他听说Stroud有一家小型阀门制造厂的所有者打算退休。
尽管克里奇利没有该行业的从业记录，但他还是争取到了一笔银行贷款，以100万英镑买下了这家工厂。他彬彬有礼地说：“我一直和银行经理保持良好关系。如果你诚实待人，赢得他们的信任，就有很大的机会得到你想要的地位。”
2000年，克里奇利意识到Severn Glocon需要在英国以外的地方建立一家工厂，以便拥有降低成本的新选择。他说：“我需要在印度和中国之间做出选择。我知道我们没有能力同时在中国和印度设立工厂，所以我得确保做出正确决策。”
接下来克里奇利花了两年时间多次走访印度（5次）和中国（7次），以便真正搞清楚在中国和印度设厂的利弊。这次他照样运用了自己的人际关系——以及这些关系所带来的关系——为做出良好决策奠定基础。
他承认：“第一次去印度时我多少有点战战兢兢，因为我对这个国家几乎一无所知。但我们的日本办事处有一位印度经理，他给我介绍了很多印度的情况。最后我选择了印度而不是中国。
“我倾向于印度的主要原因是，在印度设厂似乎更容易经营，主要因素是很多人讲英语，这就意味着语言障碍相对不重要。”
克里奇利表示，印度的业务是在世界各地赢得新客户的关键。客户订单中往往混合着精度相对较低的标准产品和高规格的阀门，后者用于安全标准极高的环境。
他说：“随着我们生产分工，我们能在印度生产标准产品，在英国生产工程密集型的阀门。这让我们有机会赢得原本没有多大机会争取到的订单。”
Severn Glocon在全球雇佣着800多名员工，其中印度工厂占了近半，其余则位于英国，要么是在格洛斯特，要么是在较小的工厂和服务中心。约有60名员工分布在东京、吉隆坡、休斯顿和北京等地的销售和服务办事处。
到了他这个年龄，多数人或许已经退休了，但克里奇利没有放松的打算。他说：“现在有这么多机会，我非常希望再把公司经营10-15年。”
克里奇利的工作方式——沉着冷静、奋力前行——仍将保持一段时间。
As Maurice Critchley strolls around his company’s sprawling factory in the English cathedral city of Gloucester, he pauses to talk with some of the production workers, remembering their names with ease. Behind the pleasantries, however, there is a purpose: Mr Critchley says getting to know people and treating them decently has helped him to build Severn Glocon into one of the world’s leading makers of “safety critical” valves for the oil and gas industry.
In both appearance and demeanour, Mr Critchley looks a model of the English gentleman. In his habitual outfit of a neatly cut suit and tie, the tall and trim 63-year-old talks in clear tones and rarely raises his voice. “I suppose you could say I exhibit English phlegm.”
The industrial valves sector in which Severn Glocon operates is well-suited to another of his characteristics: extreme attention to detail.
“Some of our valves need to stay in place – either in a refinery or in equipment on the seabed – for 30 years and work perfectly over this whole period. If this doesn’t happen, people might die,” says Mr Critchley, owner and managing director. It was equipment failure – including some that involved safety critical valves made by companies other than Severn Glocon – that was implicated in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig disaster that killed 11 people and could cost the BP oil group $37bn.
Although treating people with courtesy and listening to them is not in itself a matter of life and death, he points out that it was a chance conversation with one of his employees in 1996 that led to a dramatic change in Severn Glocon, seven years after he started out in the sector.
“I was in [the factory] during the night shift and got talking to one of the machine operators,” he says. “He told me about a local company with spare capacity and which I might be interested in.”
The business was the valves division of BTR, a UK industrial group that was performing poorly. The £2m deal, financed by a bank loan, would bring Severn Glocon a set of new products for the oil and gas industry and Mr Critchley the challenge of a sector he knew little about, since Severn Glocon’s staple products then were for the chemicals sector.
“I realised that if we bought [the BTR division], it could be a real turning point . . . The acquisition gave us not just a new set of production operations but connections to key customers, especially the state oil companies in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, that would turn out to be extremely important,” he says.
The oil and gas sector now accounts for 80 per cent of Severn Glocon’s sales, which are expected to reach £100m this year.
As a specialist producer in a niche industry – the other big makers of similar safety-critical valves are part of much bigger companies such as Flowserve and Emerson of the US – Severn Glocon is part-protected from low-cost manufacturing competition in emerging economies. But Mr Critchley decided relatively early that the company should take advantage of lower costs overseas. In doing so, it has become a “micro-multinational” – one of a band of relatively small companies with a global manufacturing and sales presence, and that have taken root in the UK.
About a quarter of Severn Glocon’s manufacturing is in India, where it has had a plant in Chennai for about 10 years, with the remaining production done in the UK. About 85 per cent of this year’s revenues will come from outside the UK, with Severn Glocon’s biggest markets including Saudi Arabia, China and Australia.
In his own modest way, Mr Critchley is a cheerleader for UK industry. “As a country we have an immense amount to offer in terms of manufacturing and engineering,” he says. “We speak the world’s language, the UK retains a fantastic reputation for quality and the country’s traditions as a place where people treat each other with respect still counts for something.”
Raised in Stroud, a small West Country town near Gloucester, he left school at 17 and trained as an accountant, having failed to achieve the qualifications to study economics at university. A range of management jobs in industry followed, including at Spillers, the UK food ingredients company, and Mallinckrodt, a US chemicals group.
But then he heard about a small valve-maker in Stroud whose owner was retiring.
Despite having no track record in the sector, Mr Crichley secured a bank loan for the £1m purchase price. “I’ve always got on well with bank managers,” he says, ever courteous. “If you are honest with people and try to build up their trust, there is a fair chance you will reach the position you want.”
By 2000, he realised Severn Glocon needed a plant outside the UK to give itself new options for achieving lower costs. “It was a choice between India and China,” he says. “I knew we could not afford to do both so I had to make sure the decision was sound.”
Mr Critchley then spent two years flying back and forth to India （five trips） and China （seven trips） to be truly sure of the good and bad points of setting up manufacturing in either location. Typically, he harnessed personal relationships – and the connections these bring – to lay the basis for sound decisions.
“In India, I went there first with a certain amount of trepidation, since I knew next to nothing about the country,” he admits. “But we had an Indian manager from [Severn Glocon’s] Japanese of¬fice and he made a lot of introductions for me. In the end I chose India rather than China.
“I was swayed mainly because India seemed an easier place to operate in, with one of the main factors being that so many people speak English – meaning the language barriers are relatively trivial.”
The operation in India, says
Mr Critchley, has been the key to winning new customers around the world. They often order valves in packages containing a mix of relatively low-precision standard items and more tightly specified customised valves used where safety standards are ultra-high.
“With our split of manufacturing, we can make the standard items in India and the more engineering-intensive valves in the UK. This gives us the chance to gain orders that otherwise we’d have a minimal chance of winning,” he says.
Severn Glocon’s India plant now employs almost half of the company’s 800 or so worldwide staff, with most of the rest based in the UK, either in Gloucester or in smaller plants and service centres. About 60 staff members are scattered among the 14 sales and services offices in locations such as Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Houston and Beijing.
At an age when many might have retired, Mr Critchley has few plans for easing up. “There are so many opportunities, I am keen to keep running the business for another 10-15 years,” he says.
Mr Critchley’s approach – keeping calm and carrying on – will remain in place for some time.
