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Room for Improvement: Justin Elford, Oxford Instruments

An infectious enthusiasm for Continuous Improvement

Joining us in our Room for Improvement this month is Justin Elford, Continuous Improvement and Manufacturing Engineering Manager at Oxford Instruments, a leading provider of high-technology products and services for research and industry.

Early in his career, Justin was tasked with the challenge of improving quality and increasing output. His initial scepticism about Continuous Improvement methodology was replaced with an infectious enthusiasm which quickly spread across the whole team, as tangible results began to reveal themselves early in the project.

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Room for Improvement: Justin Elford, Oxford Instruments

Room for Improvement: Justin Elford, Oxford Instruments- image - 2

“…over the six months we ran the project, it did deliver what we were hoping for, to the point where some of the team were actually asking ‘can we broaden the amount of magnets we can batch’, because they could see the potential impact, savings, and benefits. And not just from some of the magnet lines that we’d identified, but some of the other ones that they were more familiar with and knew that we do repeat business on. So it actually became quite infectious and also delivered some good results there.”

Becoming a Continuous Improvement Advocate

Having experienced the revelation that many of the answers the organisation were looking for were within their own gift, Justin is now a strong advocate of using Continuous Improvement to unlock the best potential there is within an organization.