Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 27, 1990 TAG: 9005270104
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-16 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WINCHESTER LENGTH: Medium
This is General Electric Co.'s factory of the future, a showcase of automation, productivity and the growing obsolescence of the American factory worker in a world of increasing competition.
Sprawled across a Civil War battlefield on the outskirts of this rural community, the GE lamp plant supplies one out of every four incandescent light bulbs used in America today.
"This is a truly amazing plant," said Peter O'Coin, general manager of GE's lamp division. "It's a totally automated process."
In the last three years, the plant's light bulb production has increased to 400 million a year from 350 million while employment has dropped 15 percent to 434 workers from 511.
Although the size of the work force has been dropping, O'Coin said there hasn't been a layoff at the plant since 1983 and that the work force reductions have been accomplished through attrition.
Increased market share also has allowed the plant to increase its production and keep more workers. In the last four years, GE, which has another light bulb plant in St. Louis, has increased its share of the domestic light bulb business to 53 percent from 50 percent.
Robert Mozgala, vice president of North American production for the GE Lighting Division, said the new push for automation and increased productivity is not apt to produce any real employment growth.
"If you get the volume you can stabilize employment," Mozgala said, "but we don't see any big employment growth."
The Winchester factory's growth also is unlikely to produce new jobs in Winchester for another reason: The factory buys nearly all of its equipment and supplies elsewhere.
From the time a pallet of parts is dropped off at the end of the light bulb assembly line until plastic-wrapped packages of bulbs are automatically loaded onto pallets for shipment at the other end of the process, there is no human involvement in the manufacturing process other than maintaining the machines.
Automation has been the hallmark of light bulb manufacturing for a number of years. But until three years ago the best manufacturing technology could produce only 3,600 light bulbs an hour. That was before the installation of the new Pro-80 system of continuous production, where machines never stop and faster lines now produce 10,000 light bulbs an hour.
GE has two of the new high-speed, totally automated production lines in service, and plant officials said installation of a third line already is under discussion. With the new production technology the company hopes to boost output to 12,000 light bulbs an hour.
The 490,000-square-foot plant has room to add seven more Pro-80 lines, which would allow it to produce nearly 1 billion light bulbs a year.
The company will not disclose the cost of the new high-speed production equipment, but Mozgala said GE has invested $1 billion in the lighting division in the last five years.
The two new manufacturing lines produce 480,000 of the plant's daily output of 1.7 million light bulbs. It takes 22 other manufacturing lines using the older automated equipment to produce the remaining bulbs.
Introduction of the new technology triggered a major change in the entire culture of the work place.
"You simply cannot run a high-level automated process without changing the culture in the plant," said O'Coin. "The culture change has to focus decision-making down to the shop floor. At 10,000 [bulbs] an hour you can't wait for a supervisor's decision or you'll wind up with thousands of bad bulbs."
by CNB