Standardization of process seen as a help in manufacturing of specialty chains
Excerpts taken from The Advertiser-Tribune’s Progress In Industry Special Edition February 21,1999
By Carol Bogart
Webster Industries has been a major Tiffin employer for nearly 100 years, today employing 250 workers. It is a leader in the production of specialty chain for industries, and also boasts of being on the cutting edge of value-added production.
Webster’s quality assurance department has been successful in winning for Webster the coveted ISO 9001 certification. The certification assures customers world-wide of the consistent quality of Webster’s products.
"The nice thing about ISO 9001" said Webster’s quality assurance manager, "is that we’ve taken a company that is 122 years old, we’ve taken all those manufacturing processes that have been put together over the years and we’ve combined them. We’ve looked at what was crucial, what was needed, and then we’ve placed them into these work instructions and standard operating procedures."
The resulting flow charts explain, step by step, how each worker is to do his or her job, how to make each product. The charts have improved efficiency, and provided means for tracking flaws back through the system.
"…With the work order it makes it a lot easier. You know you’re getting the right piece of steel, the right thickness, the measurements come out right …"
ISO 9000 is the overall standard. Within the standard are three certifications: 9001, 9002, and 9003. 9001, the most difficult to achieve, includes all 20 standards addressed with ISO 9000. Essentially, a plant with ISO 9001 registration has passed muster with auditors from top to bottom, unlike ISO 9003 certification. ISO 9003 manufacturers do final inspection/testing only. Those with ISO 9001 monitor each detail of the manufacturing process.
"… It’s not just a piece of paper, ISO 9000 is an international standard that’s recognized throughout the world. We have a registered auditor that comes in twice a year to audit our processes. They’ll randomly choose different areas. They’ll ensure that we’re following those procedures. … if procedures aren’t being followed, the certification can be taken away."
Governing bodies from throughout the world sat down and made a list of the 20 elements that manufacturers have to have to attain ISO (International Standards Organization) certification. That was in 1980.
The standard has been revised twice and will be revised again in the year 2000. The guidelines include management’s responsibility toward quality. … the CEO, and all senior managers of the company … are very much involved in the quality here at Webster. Every month, they review the quality system and they make sure that the things we put in place over the last year are working.
Juxtaposed with Webster’s cutting edge approach to global competition is its still-in-operation foundry where it makes its castings. "We make castings for our standard chain products, some of the cast links. But we also make different molds for different customers." … Webster, for instance, is the starting point for components in some of America’s best known hand tools. In the foundry, furnaces glow red as scrap iron is put into a big pot where it’s melted down twice a day. " It’s like a … volcano."
Ancient-looking carts move molds from one area to another.. Even here, ISO 9000 is making a difference in workers’ lives. "You’ve got your standard procedures. It’s all wrote up. They’ve got parts and everything is labeled … You know what part’s what ‘cause everything’s marked."
Since the advent of ISO 9000, "Things are a lot more picked up and clean around here." … that keeping the certification has meant "more paperwork."
"There’s so much diversification here at Webster. We have a foundry, we have a sheet metal department, we have a machining department, we have a punch press, department, we have a heat treat department. And all of those different departments work together to make a number of products."
"It takes every person here to take hold of this system, to believe in this system and work. … everyone from the CEO all the way down to the guy with the hardest job in the plant …"
Chief Executive Officer Fred Spurck may not have the most difficult job in a physical sense, but he is largely responsible for the new direction Webster took 13 years ago. It was Spurck who saw the need to consolidate Webster’s products and concentrate on making industrial chain.
Webster used to make an awful lot of different things that we don’t make anymore. Probably the most significant changes (in coming years) will just be additions to the chain line or expanding the vibrating conveyor line.
Webster has customers in South and Central America, Canada, Europe, and Asia. A grain conveyor manufacturer may ship product all over the world. "More of our product goes outside this country as part of somebody else’s product … than we ship ourselves."
Webster’s foundry specializes in "short-run items – 50 pieces, 100 pieces, in a whole order."
Consequently, by design, Webster does not serve the automotive industry. "that stuff tends to be high volume, … thousands of pieces a day. Probably 40 to 50 percent of what we make goes into our own product. And those tend to be short-run items. An order for a thousand or five thousand castings is a big order. In the automotive industry, they’re using millions of castings."
In 1984, Webster Tiffin employed fewer than 100 people in the plant. Since the shift to a specialization in chain, employment in the past decade has about doubled.
"It gave us some standardization, it gave us a better plan so we could manufacture and go forward. We rarely operate with more than a two or three month backlog. We can’t wait until we have an order in hand because the customer’s gonna need it before we can build it."
Webster had some good years prior to the downturn in the business cycle that led to the switch in focus to niche marketing of chain. "All of a sudden it was just a matter of survival," he says.
During the recession of 1991-1992, "We had to lay off a few people, but nothing near as dramatic as what we would have done had we (still) been in the engineering systems business."
Today Webster is an "ESOP- employee owned company and has been since 1986." … "We’ve had up to three generations working here at the same time. When you’ve got that much history in a building, it’s hard to change practices. It’s hard to change how they do things."
Even so, Spurck credits those workers for their willingness to embrace ISO 9000. "It’s something I think everybody in this company should be damn proud of. It is gonna help us in the long run and internally it should give all of our managers a little bit better feeling about what they’re doing. Because that same assurance that we’re giving to the outside world, we’re certainly giving to ourselves."