At Vienna plant, high tech boosts workers, production

At Wednesday's grand-opening event, Gov. Bob Taft toured the facility.
By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
VIENNA -- Brenda Furcron loves the expensive high-tech gadgets inside the new plastics plant where she works.
The Youngstown woman is a molder at Delphi Packard Electric Systems' new plant here, but she previously worked at its aging plant on Dana Street in Warren, which is largely abandoned.
The new, $58 million plant with 120 new presses is much nicer, she said.
Computer touch screens on the presses tell operators what needs to be done, and self-guided vehicles pick up parts bins and deliver them to the shipping area.
Even though Furcron and other operators manage 15 presses at Vienna instead of 10 in Warren, the work is more enjoyable, she said.
The press and others, including Gov. Bob Taft, toured the plant Wednesday during a grand-opening event. The plant opened in September.
Helped design plant
Assisting Packard in designing the plant was Kyle Solomon, industry manager for automotive and industry equipment for Microsoft.
"Delphi is on the leading edge of putting in place systems that replace human intervention with quality processes," he said.
Packard sought the help of Microsoft and other suppliers to bring as much advanced technology as possible to its molding operations. Much of the technology first went to a Cortland plant, which also has 120 presses and cost $42 million to renovate in 2000.
Technology in Vienna is even more advanced, however, by allowing presses to provide a greater variety of plastic parts with more intricate designs. The parts are used in connectors for wiring systems in cars and other products.
The Vienna plant is Packard's first molding plant with all-electric presses instead of hydraulic ones. Utility costs are lower and the plant is more environmentally friendly because the presses don't need to be oiled, said John Sefcik, Packard's director of U.S. operations.
Both Cortland and Vienna plants feature overhead tubes to deliver raw material from storage bins to presses automatically. The presses guide operators through steps to make sure the proper parts are being made. The vehicles that pick up the finished parts are guided by magnets imbedded on the floor and directed by wireless signals sent from a main computer.
Solomon said Microsoft's goal is to help the plant adjust production schedules quickly according to customer demand. The Vienna plant is shipping 55 percent to 60 percent of its finished products directly to customers without placing it on a shelf.
Sefcik said the company is pleased with the performance of both Cortland and Vienna.
Other big changes
Customer complaints are down 95 percent since the molding operations moved from Warren, which had older presses and no air conditioning. Defect rates fell from hundreds of parts per million in Warren to less than one part per million so far in Vienna.
Production is up about 50 percent to 2.6 billion pieces a year at Vienna and Cortland plants, even though they employ fewer people. The two plants employ about 350 people, compared with about 400 in Warren.
Don Arbogast, shop chairman of Local 717 of the International Union of Electrical Workers, said union members approved changes in work rules and a reduction of job classifications to encourage Packard's investment in the two plants. With competition coming from China and other low-wage countries, unions must be more flexible, he said.
"It doesn't do any good to run a business out of business," he said.
shilling@vindy.com