Involving employees in decision-making and planning is one of the en vogue business concepts of the '90s. While some companies give this only lip service, other companies have reaped great rewards from this concept.

Nowhere is the employee-empowerment idea better utilized than at the State College Equipment Group of Atotech in State College, PA. Here, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year have been saved, lead times have been reduced and safety advancements have been made -- all as a result of employee suggestions.

At its State College, PA, site, Atotech produces developing, etching and stripping machines that are used by high-tech and high-profile electronic companies to produce the printed circuit boards that go into their equipment. The machines are primarily made up of plastic materials, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene, chlorinated polyvinyl chlorine and elastomers. Plastic is used, "because the chemicals that are used to make the circuit boards could deteriorate other materials, such as metal, in no time," said Don Houtz, manufacturing manager at the State College Equipment Group.

Rather than purchase components from outside sources, Atotech produces a majority of the parts that go into its machines -- from the smallest wheel, to the thickest roller, as well as the main panels that enclose the guts of the machine. Any savings in time or materials would be beneficial to the company.

In 1991, the company turned to its employees for ideas on how to increase production efficiency, save money and, in general, improve the way it does business.

One of the first ideas was the use of workcells, which are now in full use in the shop. In two of these workcell areas are further examples of ideas developed by employee teams which have reaped substantial financial and time-saving rewards. One example is the injection moulding area where hundreds of thousands of dollars have been saved through the purchase of automated equipment. The second example is in the machining area, where CNC routers have been augmented by a grid hold-down system, saving set-up time and increasing productivity.

Injection Molder Keeps Products Rolling Along
A new idea for the production of rollers, which drive the wheels that push the circuit boards through the system, has already resulted in nearly $900,000 worth of annual savings. Houtz said the company also anticipates this change will increase production capacity by some 400 percent.

"We used to manufacture the rollers by purchasing expensive titanium cores, or by machining down PVC or CPVC cores, and covering them with expensive coatings. This would mean using expensive materials and a lot of production time," according to Houtz.

Following an employee-team suggestion, the company purchased a HPM Mark 1 injection molder and a roller grinder. This enabled them to quickly manufacture the PVC rollers in the injection molder, which has a very low tolerance of ±0.002 inch, and then grind them on the grinder.

In the past, a single roller would have cost Atotech $128 to produce, including materials, production time and labor. After implementing the employee suggestions, the cost to manufacture a single roller dropped to $16.

"We make 8,000 of these a year. We're now saving $896,000 a year," Houtz said.

The increased production by the injection molder led to a bottleneck at the grinders. If Atotech was to produce greater amounts of rollers, something would have to be done to increase the speed in this area, Houtz said.

"The employee-team convinced me that by purchasing a second roller grinder we could produce a roller in 2,700 seconds as compared to 8,916 seconds before," Houtz said. "You don't need to be a mathematician to figure out that we can produce a lot more rollers per year."

Routing Out the Problem
A second area where the company needed to speed up production was in the fabrication area.

"We used to have to put a template down and rout a lot size of parts because it took so long to set up the machine. It used to take 1 hour and 15 minutes to set up the template," said Mike Smoyer, a router operator on the team that studied this problem.

To reduce set up times, the employees hit upon the idea to grid the router table and use gasket tape to create a vacuum hold-down system.

"Now, we can change the tape and rout workpieces one after the other," Smoyer added. "It takes us about five minutes or less to set up the machine."

When the idea was first developed, Atotech had three routers in use at the facility. The employees physically cut the grid onto the router tables themselves.

The new CNC router from Accu-Router was specified with the grid pre-cut into the router table.

The addition of the Accu-Router CNC router has also helped speed-up production, Houtz said. The router, working with sheet stock in 4-foot by 8-foot, 4-foot by 10-foot, and 4-foot by 12-foot sizes, has an automatic tool changer. Information for the tooling is downloaded by a main computer in the programming room.

"It knows the bit it needs to pick up, the speed it must cut and the number of parts that are needed," Smoyer said. "The router has increased cycle times by more than 50 percent."

Change is Good
These were just two of the changes implemented by the State College Equipment Group of Atotech, which were based on employee suggestions. Others included:

• Purchasing overhead hoppers to automatically pick-up plastic material for placement into the injection molder.

"We use to have to climb up on top of the machine and physically dump 50-pound bags of plastic material. That was a lot of lifting and straining for our workers," Houtz explained.

• Work teams designed what the company calls a Modular Manipulator which is used to install the inner workings of the developing, etching and stripping machines. The manipulator uses suction cups to lift and turn the machine's "guts" in a variety of configurations, making the equipment's inner workings easier to install.

• The creation of a parts replacement workcell to produce parts on a just-in-time basis. This eliminated the need to keep a separate parts warehouse in Chicago.

"We want to get parts out as fast as possible and having a workcell dedicated to this has worked well," Houtz said. "The workcell produces the parts and sends 94 percent of them out in a two-hour period of time."

This is a profitable segment for the company. The small parts workcell garnered a third of the company's sales -- some $10 million in orders -- in 1996.

Not Standing Pat
1996 was a good year for Atotech's State College Electronic Group. Its $34 million in sales, up from 1995 sales of between $28-$29 million, was a record. But the company is not resting on its laurels.

Atotech is continuing to look for ways to improve production, reduce lead times and increase on-time deliveries.

"We started to make changes in 1991 and we are continuing to make changes," Houtz said. "We would change things next week if we identified waste and determined appropriate ways to make those changes."

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