Section OneCorning faced a common dilemma of many U.S. companies in
that its foreign competitors had acquired the same technology
that had enabled it to be dominant in the past. Given its
competitors’ lower labor costs, it had to adopt a different
approach unless it moved its production facilities overseas.
Corning decided that to compete on a global basis it would
need a world-class workforce. It reopened a plant in
Blacksburg, Virginia, and staffed it with 150 production workers
from a pool of 8,000 applicants. Although most of those hired
had completed at least one year of college, Corning invested in
extensive technical and interpersonal skills training. Training
took up 25 percent of total working time during the plant’s first
year of operation. The plant’s empowered workers take on
duties previously performed by managers and use their broad
range of skills in a team-based approach. An intensive
emphasis on skills is maintained as workers must master three
skill modules within two years in order to retain their jobs. In
contrast to the narrow job definitions in many U.S. plants, the
Corning plant has only four job classifications instead of the
previous 47. Because of the workers’ broad skills, the plant can
retool quickly. The result is that during the first 8 months of
operation, the plant made $2 million in profits in contrast to an
expected $2.3 million start-up loss. Because of these successes,
Corning is adopting the same approach in 27 other factories.^26