Mercury Wire employee Joan White on the company's production floor
Updated: October 12, 2020
manufacturing excellence awards
Manufacturing Awards: Mercury Wire sticks to its fundamentals
Photo | Courtesy of Mercury Wire
Mercury Wire employee Phil Atwood puts together a wire and cable assembly.
Mercury Wire in Spencer bills itself as a diverse manufacturing organization.
Operating in the wire and cable industry, the company works with everything from high-design custom cables to value-added assembly cells, where the company puts together customer products using company-produced cables.
“We work in the automotive industry on wire harnessing, military applications, oil and gas exploration – a host of different markets and products,” said support team member Scott Bishop.
Founded in 1967, the crux of the company’s business model is providing manufacturing support for customers and helping them design custom cables. But Mercury Wire’s priorities exceed the basic manufacturing dictum to make and sell. The company implements lean manufacturing principles and employs expansive use of visual controls in its factory, said Bishop, but the company leaders also heavily invested in the quality of their workforce.
“We’ve developed over the past couple years strategies for high-performing teams,” said Robert Ferraro, value stream champion. “And those strategies govern how we work together in groups.”
The biggest impact in that realm, Ferraro said, is found in its support for the growth and learning of team members. Every employee at Mercury Wire, he said, is assigned a coach-mentor to help them manage not only their time working at Mercury, but also their own personal growth. Although the company works with wiring cable, in a lot of ways, that’s just how it fuels its greater mission, which is developing Mercury Wire into what the two employees called a learning organization.
“For us, the highest level is saving humanity from business as usual,” Bishop said.
Five years ago, Bishop said, the company hired consultants to help develop a more intentional workplace culture at Mercury Wire. Part of that process involved developing what the company calls its 30 Fundamentals.
“In order to be a family member here at this house, you have to know, live and breathe the 30 Fundamentals every day and learn from them,” Bishop said.
Fundamental No. 1, for example, is work on yourself and make sure you’re constantly working to improve yourself. That might include pursuing education or expanding your knowledge within the business.
That prioritization – on the qualitative development of its workforce – has produced tangible results in throughput and scrap reduction, as well as day-to-day operational value, Bishop said.
In Bishop’s estimation, it’s that people-centric orientation that makes the company stand out.
“For me, anyway, and for a lot of people in the house here, it makes an impact,” he said.
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