Teamwork and Statistical Quality Control at Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation
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Owens-Corning Fiberglas and SQC
The terms "teamwork" and "statistical quality control" (SQC) have become an established part of U.S. manufacturing vocabulary, though not necessarily of manufacturing practice. Much has been written on these subjects, as even a cursory glance at the literature reveals (e.g., see References 1-11). This article will describe the organization and functioning of an SQC team at Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation. My observations are not necessarily novel, but I hope they provide some useful insights into team building, teamwork, and SQC in a U.S. manufacturing environment. SQC is not a new concept at all, but it was largely ignored in the United States. The contribution of SQC (more accurately, Deming's and Juran's SQC precepts11) to Japanese manufacturing quality has by now become a matter of folklore. This does not mean, however, that the SQC "philosophy" is correctly understood by U.S. companies. SQC is often viewed too narrowly as a production tool, or S and C in SQC are given undue attention. SQC is much more than a collection of statistical techniques. Indeed, the major impact of SQC results not from its engineering or technical attributes but from the changes it brings about in attitudes and in a factory's social organization. Drucker9 has identified SQC as one of the four concepts in the emerging theory of manufacturing.
The focus on SQC at Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation began in the years 1982-1985. The SQC concept was adopted for the entire corporation, including the R&D organization. While this article will not detail the incubation period (which involved commitment on the part of top management, education and training, and the spreading of the "SQC message" throughout the corporation), it should be noted that the management's commitment to SQC not only survived a takeover attempt of the company in 1986, but, not unexpectedly, got strengthened in its aftermath.
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SQC in the Glass Melting Process This article focuses on SQC in OwensComing's glass melting process. For the present purposes it is sufficient to describe the glass fiber manufacturing as shown schematically in Figure 1. Manufacturing the product, glass fiber, from the raw materials involves a number of steps designated as processes in Figure 1. SQC projects were set up for each of these processes. The following will describe the SQC project for Process 2, glass melting. This process is carried out in refractory vessels (furnaces) which convert the raw materials (batch materials) into molten glass from which glass fibers are drawn. As shown in Figure 1, the team in charge of implementing SQC in Process 2, the Furnace SQC Team, receives supplies (mixed
raw materials) from the team representing Process 1. The Furnace SQC Team provides a product (molten glass) to the team representing Process 3. Organization of the Furnace SQC Team The Furnace SQC Team consisted of the following members: • Glass furnace operators, engineers, and supervisors from manufacturing plants; • Process engineers and scientists from R&D
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