Many Engine Launches, Much Retooling At Cummins

Anna Dibble can testify to the staying power of manufacturing careers. The operations leader of Cummins Inc.’s engine business unit, Dibble has spent 33 years with the global engine and power systems company. She started at the Jamestown, New York, plant when she was 19, a summer hire on break from Pennsylvania State University.

“I grew up in Jamestown, and I happened to walk in,” she recalls. “And then after that summer, I came back as an intern.” Since then, “I’ve just had different opportunities that have led me to stay with the company and continue to build a career.” Tuition reimbursement from Cummins led her to ultimately earn an MBA and also a master’s in manufacturing management and engineering from General Motors Institute, now Kettering University. 

Today, Dibble manages the 998,000-square-foot Jamestown engine plant, as well as engine plants in Rocky Mount, North Carolina; Columbus, Indiana; Darlington, England; and Sao Paulo, Brazil. “I do get to the other sites pretty often,” says Dibble. “Luckily, we have a lot of advancements in communication that are extremely helpful.”

Recently, Dibble and her teams have been preparing launches of several new engines at the plants she oversees. In September 2024, after undergoing more than $450 million in improvements, the 50-year-old Jamestown plant launched production of the X15N natural gas engine, the first iteration of Cummins’ fuel-agnostic ICE platform for lower-carbon fuel. 

IndustryWeek talked with Dibble about the teamwork behind readying plants, people and processes for new launches, practical applications of Cummin’s “Destination Zero” zero emissions energy reduction strategy and more.

Dibble: Right now, we’re launching [the new B-6.7 engine for the Dodge Ram] at the Columbus plant. There are two plants in Columbus. We have the engine plant and a plant where they actually push blocks and heads for our heavy-duty product, which are shipped to the Jamestown plant. We've made investments at both of those sites.

So the way Cummins has established a vision for the future, we talk a lot about our product strategy, which is around what we call our HELM platforms. HELM stands for higher efficiency, lower emissions, multiple fuels. It’s a platform that we use for our fuel-agnostic platform strategy, and as part of that, we talk about how our product strategy is used and flexible across the range of fuels within our Destination Zero strategy. 

There's the product side of it, but there's also the facility readiness side. Destination Zero includes improvements in our facilities that allow us to improve our communities, and we do that through improvements in water, waste, energy, pollution prevention. 

We are just starting on the product-introduction side. We've introduced the first 15-liter natural gas engine, the first on-highway heavy-duty live haul application, at the Jamestown plant. That is the same platform that will be introduced with advanced diesel, and then the same base engine platform, which can also be used for future engine development for hydrogen or other alternative fuels. 

Right now we're in production with the natural gas engine. The advanced diesel version will come out later, and then the other fuels will follow. 

We’re investing in the plants for readiness for these products and advanced equipment machining processes—but we’re also investing in the plants for Destination Zero. We have targets that we put out towards 2030 and track all of the sites related to the major environmental initiatives on how we're doing on waste reduction. 

We track our energy usage and energy efficiency. We track our water usage. We’re doing a lot around water and recirculating systems so that we reuse water into our process systems and our equipment, and then we're doing a lot around pollution prevention. 

We are investing in new equipment for products and making sure that the new machines that we purchase and install are at the latest standards—and from an efficiency standpoint, are the latest and greatest. But we're also investing in some of our older equipment to bring those up to the same standards and actually reduce our footprint and our impact of older processing equipment as well.

At most of our plants, we have our assembly processes, but we also have heavy-machining equipment, and we produce both cylinder blocks and cylinder heads. We have some equipment that's been in place for 40, 45 years, and some brand-new equipment where the technology and tooling have advanced significantly. 

We've been able to retool lines, and we're taking away things from high-energy usage machines that would have to run 24 hours a day, to those machines where we can actually reduce our water and energy impact—recirculate as well as having as-needed, on-demand capability [rather than constantly running machines]. It's allowing us a lot of flexibility in the new product programs that we're investing in heavily, and that's allowing us significant improvement as we take out both lines. As they sunset, we're redoing old equipment and trying to upgrade at the same time. 

Assembly processes are another area where our plants are upgrading to produce new products. We need new tools and technologies to do so. So, we will do things like reduce compressed air usage and improve our lighting systems in the plants. We ask things like, “Is there more that we can do around dunnage? And how do we recycle the more returnable dunnage?” Those types of initiatives are where we're reducing our environmental impact.

Right now, our business is really strong. We're running really high demand, particularly at the Jamestown plant. We often refer to this as “trying to change some wheels on the buses.” We're going down the thruway. We’re trying to make these investments and changeover while continuing to support the current needs and demands for the plant.

In a couple of cases, we've been able to clear out areas, and we're installing new machines into greenfield types of areas that we've been able to clean. 

In other areas, like the 15-liter engine block line, we have a current block line that we’re going to shut down for a small period of time and retool it. And so depending on the product, we are taking multiple approaches. We're installing new where we have space to do so. In some cases, we will shut down ... and then in a lot of our assembly areas, we're actually upgrading as we're continuing to run. During downtimes of holidays, weekends and between shifts, we're using the opportunity to convert and upgrade lines. 

There are lot of pieces that do have to come together, but it is really exciting, and the biggest investment that we've seen at the plant level in our career. So the employees are excited, the leadership teams are excited and our communities are excited. 

There are certainly some cases where we're bringing in new tools and have to train operators on the technology. So we are seeing upskilling as well as, “How do we get the support levels to understand how this new technology works?” Certainly, we try to make sure we commonize our approach on the equipment that we buy, so that we can streamline, so that we don't have as much specialty type of equipment. We try to make sure that we stick with certain control systems or certain tools so that we can gain that experience across the plant. 

But you're absolutely right. We also have to train operators as well as our apprentices, our skilled trades and our mechanics, our electricians, our controls engineers, on how to interact with this new equipment and technology. It is exciting, but it is also a lot of work to make sure that at the end the equipment's ready, the processes established and our people are also trained at the same time.

We have a lot of demand, so I would say the hardest roles to fill are our skilled apprentice positions. Especially for machine-repair electricians. It seems like those apprentice positions are in a shortage everywhere. We run an internal apprenticeship program as well, so that we can put people through the schooling. It's about a five-year program. But we're continuing to see needs beyond that. So we're also hiring externally in addition to developing internal skills to fill those critical roles. 

We are looking at expanding what disciplines we have, and reviewing both the quantity, as well as what disciplines we need. The technology has changed, so certainly we're seeing, our control system is a lot different than what we’ve historically used. So we're also looking at variations, and what are the disciplines that we need in those apprentice programs, versus some of the historical programs that we have run. 

The Jamestown plant started working on that several years ago. At the back of the plant, we actually have a reverse-osmosis system that the water we use goes through and allows us to reuse as processed water. With a lot of our machining and engine-test processes, we use water as a coolant, and we will put some chemicals in to treat the water. This allows us to clean the water and reuse it so that we aren't just putting it back into the waste stream. We've seen a significant reduction in our water waste stream since we've had this reverse osmosis system. From 2021 to 2024, the system has recycled 15.5 million gallons of water.

The good news is we're really busy and we're making significant investments. And the difficult thing is, we're really busy and making significant investments. So I’d say the biggest challenge is just trying to balance all of that—running really strong demand, meeting our customer needs, while continuing to make these investments and doing it all at the same time. 

It's a balancing act, and there's not one solution that fits everything. And so we just try multiple ways and evaluate what solution works best in each case. We're really blessed to have employees that have been very flexible with us. Our teams are extremely flexible. We'll have people working over the holiday breaks and are really appreciative that they're giving their time and being flexible so they can get in when we’re shut down and do some of the work that's needed. [Converting and upgrading lines] continues to be one of our big challenges.

Flexibility is one of our core concepts—both for what the business needs, and for what the employees need. Cummins allows employees to adjust work hours and schedules to accommodate personal needs when possible, take on new or different roles to gain experience or support development opportunities and cross-train to help during periods of high demand or staffing challenges.