People Make Productivity Work
In a Jet Engine Parts Plant
Quality is the number one objective at the Canadian General Electric
plant in Bromont, Quebec. Robots help make quality possible, but the
biggest contributor is a new employee involvement program which
produces a high degree of competence and responsibility.
Nolan W. Rhea
o begin with, the Canadian General Electric (CGE) plant in Bromont, Quebec was not a great experiment. It was strictly business.
The Canadian government wanted
to equip its fighter squadrons and
had evinced an interest in the
American-made F·18. They would
be interested in buying 130 aircraft,
they said, if part of the cost were
offset by the building of an aircraft
plant in Canada. This was how CGE
came to build the plant in Bromont
for making jet engine compressor
blades and vanes.
The product manufactured is
very demanding. The compressor
stage of a jet engine uses a large
number of blades mounted in stages
on a central shaft to compress air
by a factor of 14 before fuel is
added to it and ignited in combustion chambers. Because of the great
heat that builds up in the engine, the
blades have to be made of titanium.
Since the failure of even one blade
could endanger the aircraft and the
people in it, each blade is made to
tenths tolerance.
The plant is currently making
parts for the CFM-86 engine used to
power European and American
commercial aircraft. It takes 894
blades and vanes to make a compressor set for one such engine.
GE already had a plant in Rutland, VT, which made good compressor parts and originally the Bromont plant was planned as a copy
of Rutland. It was made clear to
everyone in the plant, however, that
quality had to be at least equal to
what had already been achieved at
the American plant. Parts would be
shipped to the GE aircraft engine
plant in Cincinnati, OH. A five year
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Spring 1987
plan for bringing Bromont up to full
production began in 1980.
Management decided to get
higher output with high quality by
using a customized mixture of information automation, selective equipment automation and, most important, a team approach to employee
involvement.
Selective Automation
The plant's information system
is highly automated. The receiving
department uses MADIC software
written in Prime Information, a fourth
generation language. Workers use
terminals to post inventory entries
and accounts payable.
A Digital Equipment VAX
11/750 computer handled the information used by CALMA design terminals. A Hewlett-Packard HP 1000
manages quality control information
while Prime computers oversee the
whole facility.
Bar-code equipment and termi·
nals from Welch-Allyn collect information on all material as it moves
through the shop. Though it cannot
be said that the plant is paperless, it
has a lot less paper than comparable plants.
Some pieces of production
equipment are automated while others are not.
Each biade or vane begins as a
small billet of titanium. It goes
through a heating operation, then
forging, trimming, pinch and roll,
dovetail machining, deburring, laser
numbering and inspection operations. The heating, forging and trimming operations are arranged in
cells. In each cell, a man uses tongs
to move a billet from machine to
machine while in others GE P 50
robots do it.
Robots are being tried in these
cells for two reasons. First, it would
be good to get the workers away
from the hot furnaces. Second,
since the robots can be reprogrammed, they can be used to
make parts for different engines in
the future.
CGE engineers have learned a
iot from this robot installation. It was
originally thought that the robots
would pick billets out of a bulk con·
tainer with the aid of a threedimension vision device. This
proved so unreliable, however, that
the robots now use two-dimension
vision systems to pick the billets off
belt conveyors.
The original end effectors were
also discarded because they required a degree of uniformity in billet
diameters which was not present.
New end effectors designed by the
University of Rhode Island are more
successful.
Because it is a boring job, ioading and unloading the laser numbering machine is done by a robot. A
robot also loads and unioads the deburring equipment.
To eliminate paperwork in inspection, Bromont has a number of
Magnaflux inspection stations where
operators use a voice command
system to expiain quality problems
directly to a computer.
In-process inventory Is stored In
five Raymond carouseis equipped
with Mobots for storage and retrieval. It has become apparent as the
plant approaches full output, however, that all five will not be needed.
A New Approach To People
CGE does not expect the greatest part of their success at Bromont
to come from automation. Of the 80
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workstations in the plant, only seven
were automated when we visited
and only 23 others are being considered for automation. Their most important innovation is the team method of developing and employing
people.
Everyone at Bromont belongs
to either a production team or the
management team. According to
Bruna Nota, a consultant on organizational design attached to the management team, the whole human aspect of the workplace has been
restructured. Workers are assumed
to be honest, hardworking and desirous of doing a good job.
The company has a widely circulated philosophy statement which
not only says that they are trying to
make money but also that there will
be worker participation and personal
development. Workers will'
• "Be challenged;
• Have interesting work;
• Be involved in decision making;
• Have opportunities for growth;
• Be part of a team;
• Have a sense of accomplishment;
• Have a desirable future.
There is much stress placed on
training. Instead of staying in a narrow job category, each worker is encouraged to learn new skills needed
by his group. Regardless of the job
he does in the group after acquiring
the skill, he will be paid according to
his highest skill level. About 10 percent of each worker's time is spent
in training.
The advantages of this approach are enormous. Team members can trade jobs; the illness of
one person does not shut down a
team; new technology can be assimilated more easily. "The factory is a
living organism like a plant or a
child," says Nota. "If you encourage
an apple tree to grow, you'll get
more apples."
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Fig. 1. Some work stations at Bromont are automated. In this picture, a robot takes a
titanium billet from a rotary furnace and loads it into a forging press. A Series 6
programmable controller coordinates the actions of the various pieces of equipment
in the cell. (General Electric photos)
Decentralized Responsibility
Unlike most companies which
make a sharp division between the
managers and the workers and give
the managers all the responsibility,
CGE Bromont follows a policy of
giving each person as much responsibility as he can handle. He should
be responsible for everything having
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Fig. 2. A major effort has been made to automate the handling of information. This
electronic gaging stetion incorporates a microcomputer, analog distance
transducers, and digital transducers to replace conventional and dial indicators and
micrometers. The operator follows gaging instructions on the terminal screen.
Target
to do with his job. Each team is also
responsible for choosing a leader.
After the climate of individual
responsibility is established, it
changes the way management deals
with the teams. Instead of giving detailed instructions on how to do a
job and then watching to see that
the instructions are followed, managers tell each team the end result
desired. The team has a meeting to
decide how best to meet the objective and then tackies the job with
only spot supervision from above.
The team also controis production
scheduling and quality assurance.
The managers themselves are
organized into a team. Tooi, material, quality, manufacturing, and information systems experts confer with
Richard Pelletier, head of the management team, when decisions have
to be made. He generally goes
along with the consensus opinion of
the management team reasoning
that the team as a whole is more
experienced than anyone man can
be.
To make sure this reasoning is
justified, Bromont has a policy which
requires each office employee to
spend one day a month in the shop
Each month he takes over a different task and gets a feel for the nature of the job and the problems it
entails. To ensure that understanding grows in both directions, each
factory team member spends a day
a month behind a desk.
To perpetuate the team spirit,
Bromont has also departed from tra
ditional hiring practices. Each applicant goes through 28 hours of interviews before being considered for
employment. Then the team in
which the employee will work evaluates him. If one member of the team
has reservations about him he is not
hired. If he is hired, he enters the
plant knowing that his team has
placed its confidence in him. He
thus begins his employment with a
feeling of worth and a desire to
excel. Even so, there is a five-month
evaluation period in which he has to
show that he can handle the work
and get along with his fellow employees.
Spring 1987
Fig. 3. Zygia visual inspection using voice input allows data about quality to be
entered directly into a computer database. The data is used to generate shop
reports, then is transferred to a central quality system for analysis and retention.
After the new employee gets a
favorable evaluation, he is salaried
(there are no hourly workers at
Bromont). He becomes entitled to
vacation, 20 sick days, and five personal days a year.
If someone in a particular team
finds a way to cut costs, the company pays a percentage of the savings
to the team. Since a team succeeds
or fails as a unit, the bonus is
shared equally among team members.
Misplaced Misgivings
When GE management first
considered the Bromont project,
there were many doubts that it coula
be made to work. Quebec has a
very highly developed social welfare
system and the "safety net", as they
call it, is big enough to catch anyone
who doesn't want to work. If managers gave orders and the workers de.
cided not to follow them, a threat of
dismissal would mean nothing.
The team approach wasn't an
obvious solution. It seemed to weaken management when management
was already at a disadvantage.
Some GE executives predicted that,
if workers were responsible only to
other people like themselves in a
team, absenteeism would skyrocket.
It took a leap of faith to experiment
with the new system of worker involvement.
Now that CGE Bromont has a
few years of experience, costs and
benefits are becoming apparent.
Time and resources are consumed
by the numerous meetings and
training programs and decision making is somewhat slower than in a
traditional workplace. There is also a
tendency for some teams to become
more independent than others.
The benefits, however, far outweigh the costs. The organization is
leaner than was expected while
costs are lower and performance is
up. The teams have developed a lot
of flexibility and problem-solving capability. Absenteeism is 1.4 percent
from all causes.
The teams are protective of
their members, but on the personal
rather than the production level. A
team will shield a member who has
a personal health problem, but won't
tolerate any malingering. "What is
more," says Pelletier, "they are
much less tolerant of incompetent
workers than management would
be."
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Fig. 4. Calma work station - CADICAM system: This system's CAD (computer aided
design) applications include the design of jigs and fixtures, forge dies, and general
tooling. CAM (computer aided manufacturing) uses include NIC (numerical control)
for toolroom and manufacturing, and DNC (direct numerical control).
Positive Results
In 1983 CGE Bromont employed 175 people and produced a
few hundred blade-vane sets. In
1985 employment approached 300
and the plant completed 800 sets. In
the beginning, lead time for a set
was an excessive 26 weeks. As the
teams have gotten a greater grip on
.their jobs, lead time has fallen to 16
weeks. The employees regard this
number as a beginning, and plan to
reduce it much further.
Because of the nature of the
product, quality has been a major
consideration even as the plant has
pushed for higher output. Everyone
is aware of this because they look
at signs on the wall which say, "La
qualite C'est mol. Ensemble nous
sommes les Meilleurs!" ("I am quality. Together we become the best".)
Experts in all industries agree
that when you have a parts-permillion reject rate you have quality.
Of a half million parts sent from Bromont to Cincinnati, only 15 have
been returned. In part, this is due to
the effective automation of some
work stations. Even more, though, it
is due to the work being done by
people who want to do a good job.
One reporter who saw the plant
at the same time we did complimented the achievements of the employers and then regretted that such
an elitist employee system probably
could not be transferred to most
other manufacturing plants. Both
workers and managers disagreed,
saying that the only requirement for
a person to begin the interview
process is a high school education.
They believe that most people can
become capable manufacturing
workers if they are given the right
tools, training and attitude.
Reprinted with permission of Material
Handling Engineering magazine, from
the May 1986 issue. Additional photos
supplied by General Electric.
Fig, 5. Automation of pinch and roll: A GE P50 robot loads and unloads airfoils into
the pinch and roll machine. Other equipment used in building this cell include a
bowl feeder to orientate parts before the robot picks them up, and a programmable
controller to control the sequence of events within the cell.
Author: Nolan W. Rhea is an associate
editor of Material Handling Engineering
magazine. Rhea's series, "Productivity
in manUfactUring: survival strategy for
U.S. industry," received a second place
award in Its category at the Eighth Annual Awards Competnion sponsored by
the Cleveland Chapter of the American
Society of Business Press Editors. This
series was written in conjunction with
William G. Stoddard of Arthur Andersen
& Co.
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