Related Posts

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  Scrum: The Art of How an Overtasked Engineering Department Turned Their Work from Frenzied to Feasible

  Though the practice of scrum is fairly new to Cambridge (has only been actively applied in three of our 56 year existence) it has already helped us formulate a new approach to goal setting and how we will ultimately achieve those goals. More importantly, we are using it to address safety practices and protocols within Cambridge, so that every one of our fellow employees makes it home at the end of the day. After being introduced to the scrum concept (grouping agile thinkers together that stress constant communication to achieve complicated tasks and goals) in J.J. Sutherland’s book Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, a group of Cambridge engineers volunteered to be trained in the practice by Toyota scrum expert Nigel Thurlow and apply it within the Cambridge walls, thus becoming our first four certified Scrum Masters. See their story and how their daily work has changed over the past few years. To catch a glimpse of Nigel Thurlow’s on-site scrum training at Cambridge - make sure to check out our blog on his visit!
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  Nigel Thurlow Trains Cambridge on Scrum

  We had the privilege of welcoming Nigel Thurlow, Chief of Agile at Toyota Connected to Cambridge to train us on the fundamentals of how Scrum, Lean and Agile all work together in a beautiful equilibrium. As many of our Scrum teams are off and running, this was a great opportunity to review and realign to keep the momentum going. Watch the video below to see how we took advantage of having Nigel onsite for 8 hours! To find out more about the initial Scrum training that Cambridge sought out from Nigel, make sure to see our previous blog post on Learning Scrum - The Toyota Way!    
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  ANDON - OUR LATEST LEAN IMPROVEMENT

  Cambridge has recently decided to test the Andon strategy from the Toyota Production System in conjunction with the lean manufacturing already being practiced at our shop. Andon is a popular form of visual management used in lean, designed to alert operators of problems as they occur in order for corrective action to be taken immediately. Originating from the Jidoka methodology used in Toyota’s production system, the system empowers employees to recognize problems and take initiative to stop the workflow without waiting for their superiors to do so.  In most cases, an operator would pull the “Andon Cord” - a rope located above the manufacturing line which signals to everyone that a problem has been detected in a specific location on the line. Because of its benefits and empowerment to employees, Cambridge decided to adopt its own form of Andon. Instead of using a typical Andon Cord, we chose to use the Voxer App.  Voxer is a “walkie talkie-like" app that can be downloaded on smartphones or computers. This app was chosen because, unlike the traditional Andon method, it allows various forms of access to the individuals ...

• Excellence Strategy: Simplicity and Spreading the Word

  Reprinted with permission from the Winter 2017 issue of Target, an AME Publication. Authored by Lea Tonkin Part Four of a Four Part Series. Miss the beginning? Click Here to Read!     Leadership continues to hone its strategic planning process, and how strategic initiatives reflecting lean progress and goals are communicated throughout the organization. Having a three- to nine-month “thematic goal” or rallying cry, with defining objectives, has been a primary method for building alignment during the past five years. Beginning in 2017, a three-year strategic plan has been put in place to help drive longer-term decision making towards a common vision. “Our three-year plan has helped the teams focus and continue to increase engagement,” Marc Braun said. “For example, one of our initiatives for 2017 is that every employee will spend at least a half-day learning by benchmarking at another company. We continue to improve our process for rolling forward on strategy, so that goals are aligned in five key areas: organizational health, lean/continuous improvement, revenue growth, product development and paying it forward.” The company’s ...
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  When is simply having safety protocols not enough?

  There is likely a “Safety First” reference in every employee handbook in the United States. Every company wants to mitigate the chance that one of their own could get hurt or worse. While the work has been done to establish safe practices, the ability to translate a protocol into real-time, real-life risk reduction is often disconnected. For us at Cambridge, while establishing safe practices by identifying and reducing risks have always been components of our training and day-to-day work, it is fair to say that we have not always effectively communicated the expectations to the entire organization – especially for those outside of operations. We are just now taking the steps to ensure that our protocols are communicated, understood and being practiced to truly make for a safe environment for the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives that create our work community. Identifying safety goals & our 2022 strategy Our first step for improvement was to evaluate what we had in place and find opportunities for improvement in terms of the protocols themselves.  In 2022, we are focusing on increased proactivity though job hazard analysis, identifying hazards as ...
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  Kata – the process for continuous improvement

    Continuous improvement plays a key role in the Cambridge culture - we are always striving to better ourselves and our processes. After learning about 2-Second Lean from Paul Akers and adopting it in our shop, we then explored the methodology of continuous improvement and found Kata. Most recently employees were introduced to it through the AME 750 and 24-week continuous improvement training.  The structured practice of continuous improvement, Kata has proven to enhance our lean methodologies and give us the process to see a project through with enhanced outcomes. In this video, Becca Jenkins does a great job of explaining how our Operations Engineering team uses Kata to improve different production lines and processes. Used first on our S-series HTHV heating line, employees formed teams and came together to create experiments. Through many experiments guided by Kata, we have been able to drastically cut down on the space required to perform tasks while also reducing the number of errors made during our processes. These improvements have been most recently implemented on our new paint line. Using Kata, we have identified ways ...