3. Case VI-I
Vitreon Corporation: The Hyalite Project
Summary:
Considers decisions facing the leader of a
manufacturing staff project team assigned to a plant
where yields have deteriorated sharply The process is
complex the plant organization is not cooperative, and
there are deep disagreements about what is wrong and
how to fix it
4. Vitreon Corporation in The new millennium
• Vitreon is a leader in the development of
glass and ceramic products for the
automotive industry.
• Although Vitreon’s well-known Thermalite
and Microwave cooking products and
Calescia dinnerware, it’s most successful
product was a line of innovation, water-
repellent windshields.
• Using an innovative glass-forming and
coating process, Vitreon had entered the
5. • The operating divisions had had
considerable control over marketing and
manufacturing decisions, and corporate
staffs in these areas had been relatively
small. Only in research and development
did corporate staff influence the company’s
direction.
• The Techinal Staffs Devision was
responsible for all research and
development activities as well as for
manufacturing engineering. New products
6. Changes in the automotive business and corporate reorganization
• In 1995, two large Japanese automotive
customers had encouraged a Japanese supplier to
open a plant in US to produce windshields for their
U.S.-produced automobiles. Although Vitreon
remained profitable, growth over the next three
years slowed, and its market share declined.
• This lead to a reemphasis on the technology
competence of the company in new product
development and a focus on both process
excellence and productivity.
• A major step was the establishment of M&E,
manufacturing and engineering division, at the
7. Manufacturing and Engineering Division
• From 1999 to 2004, engineers from the M&E
Division participated in numerous projects throughout
Vitreon involving both process changes and the
installation of new equipment.
• The group also participated in the transfer of
products from R&D to production. Harris
believed that successful transfer required people
who appreciated both the development
process ad problems of production. M&E product
teams served as mediators and translators; their
primary task was to establish credibility with the R&D
group and with the manufacturing people in the
operating divisions.
8. The Hyalite project
• Since 2004 June, yields on the Hyalite process at
the division’s Fontana plant had declined sharply.
“Jane Welsh”, director of manufacturing for
Industrial products,
met with Harris to establish an M&E first
turnaround project at Fontana.
• M&E project team would work in the plant under
the general supervision of a review board. The
team’s charter was to increase yields, define and
document the process, and train the operating
people.
9. 1.Anders Lindstrom – an expert in statistical
process control.
2.Alejandra Perez – with a master’s degree in
industrial engineering from the
University of Texas. She had worked in the
Fontana plant for six months.
3.Joe Smith – a mechanical engineer and, in
Andrews’ words, “a wizard with
equipment.”
4.Michelle LeBlanc – a chemist. She had earned
Andrews’ admiration for her ability
to solve processing problems.
• For the first two or three weeks, Andrews planned
to use the small group to identify
10. Hyalite: Product and Process
• Hyalite was Vitreon’s code name for a
multilayered, compression-molded glass product
that was exceptionally strong and impact-resistant
for its weight.
• Accrington and his staff had developed Hyalite
during the late 1990s. Introduced in 2000, Hyalite
products were an immediate success. From 2000 to
2004, production capacity grew 35 to 40 percent
annually yet failed to meet demand, and then in the
late 2004 yields on the Hyalite process had declined
11. Making Hyalite products consisted of three main
steps:
1.Melting – The first step was preparation of
the different types of molten glass that constituted
the various layers. These mixtures were prepared in
separate electrically heated vats. Each vat was
monitored to ensure that the ingredients of the
glass were in correct proportion and at the
appropriate temperature.
The base layer was poured continuously onto
a narrow moving strip. The other layers were
poured on top of each other at precisely controlled
intervals. Minor deviations from the recipe could
lead to major problem, often requiring ad hoc
solutions using the unprogrammable skill and deep
12. 2.Molding – Rectangles of the soft glass
sandwich were cut off the moving strip and moved
onto a series of separated conveyor belts. Each
slab was inserted between the jaws of a
compression-molding device that contained molds
for the particular parts being produced. After the
parts were stamped out, they continued down the
conveyor line while the glass trim was discarded.
Despite the apparent simplicity of the
process, it was generally considered to be even
more difficult to control this stage than the melting
stage. Typical problems included the basic
dimensional specifications of the product, its edge
13. 3.Finishing – The operation comprised
heat treating the molded objects, then applying
one of several possible coating, from the functional
to the ornamental. This operation occurred as the
objects passed on conveyor belts through long
ovens. The seldom-attained target yield was 95
percent
The unique characteristics of the three
stages made over all control and fine-tuning of the
total process quite difficult. Moreover, it was often
difficult to isolated which part of the process fault
because there was a high degree of interrelation
among them. And, finally, once a problem and its
14. The Fontana Plant
• Built in 1985 and long devoted to the production of
headlights and other auto products, the plant had
operated with excess capacity for several years in the
mid-1990s.
• In 1999, headlight production was consolidated in
the Spoken plant while Fontana was set up for
Hyalite production, but several of the production
foremen and manufacturing staff members were
transferred to Spokane and replaced by individuals
who had been involved in Hyalite prototype
production.
15. Organization at Fontana Plan
Plant manager
Production
Maintenance and
Production planning and
Personnel
superintendent
engineeringInventory control
Melting
Molding
finishing
16. Organization Chart
President
P. Conner
Industrial Products M&E Division
Division General A. Harris
Manager
Processing Equipment
Engineering Development
Director of A. Gupta B. Wisniewski
Manufacturing
J. Welsh
Hyalite
Review Board
Hyalite
Fontana Plant Review
J. MacIntosh M. Andrews
17. M&E Project at Fontana
• In the first two weeks of the project, Andrews’ team
tried to define the problem. One problem surfaced
immediately: the relative inexperience of the
department supervisors. MacIntosh explained to them
that four of the six supervisors had been in the plant
less than
nine months. The people they replaced had been with
the Hyalite process since its prototype days.
MacIntosh felt that part of the explanation for the
decline in yields was the departure of experts.
• Lindstrom’s preliminary statistical work pointed to
the molding department as the primary source of
defects, with melting the second major source. The
18. Conflict Emerges
• Andrew thought a key element of the program was the
instrumentation to collect information on the many crit
the installation of sensors to monitor glass temperature
• Most subprojects, but the group working on materials
The M&E team did not get the cooperation from plant’s
team as part of the problem. He strongly belived that t
departure and yields have been increasing steadily in t
Accrington was another problem, giving the operators
to let him try out his latest scheme.
19. Resolving the Crisis
• On March 24 Andrews reviewed the events of the last t
The recent improvement in yield performance because
little beyond data analysis. He never encountered such
• Several options came to his mind as he thought of way
were appealing. He could ask that MacIntosh be raplac
He could continue to try to build alliances with a few su
develop a new approach to the problem (perhaps new
MacIntosh.
21. Problems in Vitreon
• The present problem (at that time) was the inefficiency
of Hyalite manufacturing process.
• The root cause was the Fontana plant organization and
the plant manager, MacIntosh, which leaded the plant
staff not cooperative with M&E Project.
• The disagreement between Andrew and MacIntosh
postponed the resolution.
• Another cause was the misallocating of engineering
resources among various Vitreon’s plants.
22. Advice for Andrew
• First, he should tell the review board the problems his team faced
(both manufacturing problem and plant staff problem).
• He could ask the review board for more authority while working
in Fontana plant, so he could get more support from plant staff.
(This would be worked only in the short term.)
• In long term, he should proposed the Vitreon’s committee to
change the plant organization (including new plant manager
perhaps).
• Also Vitreon should reconsider the allocating plan of engineering
resources among various plants.
23. Diagram of the Critical Elements of the New Product Development Process
Market
Value
Lead customers
Contribution
Management
Engineering Marketing
Manufacturing
24. A Model of Internal and External Learning
Market
Learning by using Value
Lead customers
Contribution
Learning by failure
Management
Engineering Marketing
Learning by doing
Manufacturing
25. Learning by Moving Away from Home base
Newness of market
Newness of
organization
Existing Home
market base
Existing
organization
Existing Technology
Newness of Technology
