Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 16, 1994 TAG: 9412170001
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A19 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A reorganization this week at AMP Inc.'s Roanoke plant is expected to prod investment of $7.2 million in renovation and equipment.
"A breakthrough event" is what the people at AMP called it when they took time to rearrange their Hollins Road electrical connectors factory into more efficient work areas that will enable them to give customers quicker service at a lower cost.
In the process of moving machinery around in the plant, the AMP workers freed up 14,000 square feet of floor space. It eventually will be used for a new metal-stamping and plastic-molding operation, creating high-paying jobs and making the plant less dependent on outside parts suppliers, managers said.
The Roanoke plant is a unit of the public, multinational company based in Harrisburg, Pa. AMP is a leading supplier of electrical and electronic connection products and systems with 29,000 employees in 36 countries. The company had net sales of $3.45 billion last year and claims 19 percent of the $19 billion-a-year worldwide market for its products.
AMP opened an operation on Kimball Avenue in Roanoke in 1983 and, in 1985, its 75,000-square-foot Hollins Road plant, one of 93 company plants worldwide. The plant employs 409 people on three shifts and hires at a top entry level rate of $9.50 an hour. Each year, the plant makes 150 million connectors used in computers, other electronic equipment and at the ends of cables that link pieces of electronic equipment.
AMP, in recent years, has changed its management style to Value Added Management, an Australian-modified version of the total quality management or continuous improvement management techniques. It's a management style that gives more authority to workers on the factory floor on the theory that they know better than anyone how to improve what they do.
While a company practices continuous improvement on a day-to-day basis, occasionally it will undergo a revolutionary change or breakthrough in the way it does business, Dave Hensley, a company project manager for Value Added Management in Winston-Salem, N.C., said Thursday.
The planned breakthrough that occurred this week will result in the investment of $3.2 million in plant renovations and $4 million in new equipment over the next two to three years. That comes on top of $4 million the company invested this year in new machinery.
The company projects the changes could result in an inventory reduction of as much as 90 percent, production-time reduction of 75 percent, space reduction of 50 percent, and productivity improvement of 20 percent to 40 percent.
The plant's customers include IBM, Compaq, AT&T/NCR and Motorola. It's major competitors are Thomas & Betts, Foxconn, Burndy and Molex.
Although a desire to remain competitive in the world market rather than new demand for the plant's products prompted this week's changes, the result could mean more jobs in Roanoke if better prices and service bring the plant new business, said Danny Bobbitt, a plant team leader and part of plant management.
Employment has actually increased at the plant since it began implementing the new management program two years ago, said Mark Single, another manager and manufacturing team leader. It's important for employees to know that in working to make the plant more efficient they are not working themselves out of a job, he said.
Lewis Holland, an 11-year plant employee, served on a worker team that rearranged the work area where connectors that are attached to cables are made. He said employees in that area made more connectors on one shift Wednesday than they had ever done before in an entire week. The new arrangement also saved half the floor space the process formerly used.
Sam Moore, who has worked at the plant seven years, said his team found a way to reduce the space and number of workers needed to produce a new product line for the plant, a double-connector, improving on the system a company engineer had designed.
The new style of management is a lot better than the old way of doing things, he said. "The employees know by hands-on experience where things need to be changed."
by CNB