About 25 people from Story, Cambridge, Helena and McKee came together in St Louis on March 5 and 6. We attended presentations by representatives from each organisation followed by questions and answers. Helena, McKee and Cambridge had operations people explain their experiences at the coalface in applying work standards principles and those beyond, ‘visual thinking’ for example. Dave Hyem (retired Boeing Vice President) discussed ‘leading work from inside out and outside in’, something he practiced relentlessly later in his Boeing years.
A feature (and a big thank you) was a site tour of Cambridge Chesterfield in small groups. Cambridge Air Solutions make industrial heating and cooling systems for factories. The Chesterfield site set up three ‘stop stations’ for us, each manned by leaders from the area. Our small group size permitted a thorough understanding of the work at each station and how quality and associate engagement had benefitted from their practice of associated routines. A component packing example, driven by not infrequent customer complaints in the past, has had zero complaints since applying foundational work standards principles.
Here’s a specific example of one of the stations.
The ‘box’ you see on the table is a burner from one of Cambridge’s industrial heaters. In front of the box are 5 ‘burner tiers’ being the ‘flame point’. One of the tiers (the sixth) is to the left of the 5. To get a consistent and reliable flame, the bends position and angle and slits of each tier must be VERY uniform. The burner assembler (downstream internal customer) was experiencing lack of uniformity giving rise to scrap.
In the routine for the development of work standards, there is a specific pattern that’s followed (which helps get people started in applying principles). Without realizing (which is terrific) this pattern of development is reflected in Zach Sandknop’s 30 second explanation of burner tier standards you can watch here. Toward the end he pulls in the training (via Job Instruction) of a specific part of the ‘people work standard’. Great explanation Zach, thank you. As he says, the logic flows.