Resources by Brompton Bicycle

Brompton Bicycle: Textiles Cycle Route

In this set of six lessons, students are briefed to design, make and evaluate a product suitable for use with a Brompton bicycle. The activities are presented in the context of a real company and include challenges that reflect the textiles technology strand of the design and technology curriculum.

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Brompton Cycle Routes: Extended design challenges

The Brompton Cycle Route projects offer students experience of the design process from initial brief through market and product research, generating design ideas, modelling/trialling, production planning and evaluation. The activities are presented in the context of the Brompton Bicycle Company and offer...

Brompton Design

Will Carleysmith, senior designer at Brompton Bicycle, describes how designers need an understanding of materials and manufacturing processes are essential in his role. He explains how mathematics and CAD are used in the design process, as well as rapid prototyping techniques.

Brompton Factory

This short film clip shows the different machines, work areas and production processes in the Brompton Bicycle factory.

Brompton Fold

This short clip shows the stages of folding a Brompton bicycle.

Import and Export

In this film the managing director of Brompton Bicycle explains the advantages and disadvantages of exports and why they need to import about 40% of the parts from abroad. He describes the different tiers of suppliers and how this can have implications for quality control.

Lean manufacturing

This film looks at how Brompton...

Managing Costs

This film, from Brompton Bicycle, looks at how standard costing is used to keep track of where money is being spent during the production process. This is the ideal re-determined costs that the company ought to incur for an operation. The film describes three manufacturing cost elements: direct materials,...

Material choices at Brompton

This video looks at the different grades of steel used in the frame design of a Brompton bicycle, typically steel tube and steel sheet. Designers consider several criteria when choosing materials for a folding bicycle, including strength, weight and durability. Due to the manufacturing process, Brompton does not...

Quality Control

Terry Blackman, Quality Engineer at Brompton Bicycle, explains the process of quality control and quality assurance. They test the tensile strength of the materials and make sure the brakes function in the wet as well as the dry. He explains why braziers mark every part they manufacture for traceability. They...