Workers Are Assets At Zilog
Semiconductor Industry News - January 1982 - Semiconductor International
By adopting Japanese management policies, the U.S.-semiconductor industry can control low productivity and high employee turnover. So states Manny Fernandez, president of Zilog, "U.S. industry's typical view of workers as liabilities inhibits productivity growth". Fernandez contends that a key reason the U.S. is lagging behind Japan in worker productivity and employee retention is that much of American industry regards its workers as liabilities, or unpredictable forces needing tight control. "IN the U.S. a worker is taught to frequently make decisions whose impact he doesn't understand, based on information he doesn't understand, asserts Fernandez. "Pushing buttons becomes an endless series of meaningless tasks."
The Japanese, however, have successfully established a meaningful connection between workers and the work they do, as measures by a productivity growth nearly three times the U.S. rate over the past two decades. Part of the success is due to cultural traits - Japanese consider their place of employment an integral part of their lives. But part of Japan's success is also due to their management policies. "Among these policies are a guarantee of long-term employment and continuous development of employee skills in many areas, which promotes a broad understanding of the product and emphasis on team work," says Fernandez.
By taking elements from the Japanese style and implementing them at Zilog's Nampa, Idaho manufacturing plant, the company achieves a more successful work-design approach. This facility's annual turnover is 1.5% compared to a typical rate of 55% to 60% for Silicon Valley fabrication plants. Fernandez explains that the decision to do something different came about in an attempt to meet production needs. Zilog had to get its new plant running in about half the normal time, while achieving higher-than-normal yields. The premise of the new approach is that if workers are given the knowledge and skill to understand the reasons for and the impact of what they are doing, they will develop a commitment to doing it well. The key to this is embodied in the Nampa plant's stated goal to produce good ICs not just good wafers. "The importance of this distinction," Fernandez states, " is tat it forces each worker to think in terms of an end product, a result, instead of an isolated process of interim step."
This philosophy is supported by the plant's unusual organizational structure. The manufacturing operation is grouped in to "state-change" units, each centered around a significant change the IC undergoes between the time it enters and leaves that unit. An employee team assigned o each state change unit has complete control over any deviations that can occur within the unit and responsibility for its own quality control. Teams solve such problems as poor visual quality and high wafer breakage, and come up with ideas for maintenance programs and equipment changes. " They are finding answers that have long eluded management," remarks Fernandez.
While this new management idea has been used at Zilog form its beginning, Fernandez says that the socio-technical approach used in the Nampa facility is just as feasible for already existing semi-conductors plants, although the degree of change expected and the time allotted for accomplishing the change must be much more modest than in new plants, where there is nothing to undo. "The semiconductor industry will realized enormous benefits if we continue to evolve and implement innovative management styles," he says "But the key to success will be the ability of American managers to trust our workers and give them more responsibility for the things that directly affect them."
