Manufacturing success

When Kodak executive Mr Greg Glenn first moved to Cork 3 1/2 years ago it didn't take him long to fit in. A keen racing enthusiast, he bought the leg of a racehorse which - like most of his Irish concerns - has come up trumps. "Jimmy Dan" has been in the winners circle several times making Mr Glenn a regular at the Mallow, Clonmel Tipperary races. But despite all the champagne and caviar, racing isn't Mr Glenn's first passion: this, he insists, is still manufacturing.

"I have manufacturing in the blood. It's a complicated process involving a number of different areas and disciplines and bringing these together successfully is the challenge," says Mr Glenn, who was recently appointed director of DVD Products at Matsushita Media Manufacturing LLC of the US. Mr Glenn's recent promotion follows his successful stewardship of Kodak's Cork plant which bounced back from threatened closure in 1997 to become joint venture partner of Panasonic Disk Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mastushita Electric Industrial Co.

The new joint venture business will manufacture optical media products including CD-R disks and DVDs and is expected to create up to 100 jobs at the plant in Youghal, Co Cork.

The plant has had a rather erratic history. It performed extremely well up until mid-1997 and was struggling to keep up with demand for its CD-R (a CD onto which information can be copied) product. But after investing heavily to increase capacity, the plant suffered when Taiwanese CD-R producers entered the market during the summer causing prices to drop and oversupply in the marketplace.

"There was a lot of pressure to close down the Irish operation and relocate to Mexico," he says. Instead Mr Glenn invited experts from three of Eastman Kodak's sites to come to Youghal to experiment with methods to improve efficiency.

"We ran one line of manufacturing and tried all the best practices from all three sites and came up with the best of the best," he says. "We clearly documented the manufacturing process and procedures and then trained all of our people to do it the same way day-in, day-out."

Adopting these procedures vastly improved labour efficiency. Between August 1997 and January 1998 efficiency increased by 50 per cent, this was percentage improvement repeated between January 1998 and January 1999.

While Mr Glenn puts much of the credit down to the highly trained workforce at Youghal, he has become an advocate of clearly defined management systems which encourage efficiency in all aspects of the business.

"We brought in the ANAR management process named after an Indian consultant living in the States called Nirdosh Reddy. It is a very data driven system which enables everyone to respond and makes decisions based on hard data rather than emotion."

Mr Glenn believes the essence to good management is having the gift of problem-solving. He says: "If there is an issue or problem then we ask ourselves: What's missing, who is the problem, who did this or what's missing from the process?"

He attributes his knack for problem solving to his college degree in chemistry. "I think I have a natural knack for mechanical and engineering things. The chemistry background sets the mind to thinking in certain ways and addressing problems in a certain way," he says.

After graduating from Georgia College in 1978, Mr Glenn worked for CBS records before joining Kodak in 1985. He has experience of working on almost every kind of storage media developed in the past 25 years including; 12-inch LPs, video disks, Photo CDs, CD-Rs and DVDs. His working life has taken him from California to Mexico and New York, where he spent 12 years before moving to the Republic.

He insists he has no regrets about moving from the bright lights of New York City to the seaside town of Youghal just over 3 1/2 years ago. His hometown of Hartwell, in Georgia has a population of between 5,000 and 6,000 people and is quite similar to his adopted Irish home, he maintains.

"It was like coming home for us. We'd been in Rochester, New York for 12 years before coming to Ireland," he says. "It was nice to come back to a small town environment and the people of Youghal have been so kind to us."

Since arriving in the Republic, Mr Glenn has taken up some hobbies and pastimes. A keen hunter in the US, he has gone shooting here a number of times, however his latest craze is golf, which he took up upon arriving in Cork.

"I'm hooked on the Irish golf greens big time: I took it up in 1996 when I came over and I'm playing off a 22 handicap right now," he says.

Mr Glenn even managed to win a prize at an Aer Lingus sponsored golf competition at the Douglas Course in Cork and admits to being considered something of "a bandit" by his golfing companions.

However, his new position as director of DVD Products won't allow him much time off to pursue hobbies. He will report to the US chief manufacturing officer for Panasonic Disk Services in Los Angeles and will spend much of his time liaising between the venture's plants in Youghal and Mexico. This will mean constant travelling for around half the year.

"It's going to be tough but it needs to be done and I don't mind doing it," says Mr Glenn. "My family are very understanding and they know how important it is for the business for me to do this."

But won't communication problems posed by merging two separate companies make his job more difficult?

"Both companies are very similar in that they are focused on quality, continuous improvement and new technology. It's just a question of setting up avenues of communication," says Mr Glenn.

"The time I've spent with Panasonic people up to now has shown them extremely open to communication and interaction: they are excited about this opportunity, it opens up a whole load of new people, new ideas and everyone will benefit from it."

His new position as director of DVD Products gives him responsibility for transferring DVD technology into the joint venture plants in Youghal and Mexico. This will require a shrewd awareness of market conditions for the DVD and an ability to judge when and what level of capacity is required. He will be anxious not to repeat the errors which affected Kodak's CD-R business in 1997.

"I've got strengths in the technology of disk manufacturing and while I'll have some learning to do, I think I will pick it up quickly and translate that into a successful manufacturing industry," says Mr Glenn. "I will keep focused knowing that we have to achieve and meet goals, do things better, faster, quicker and less expensive."

With the market for CD-R's set to increase from 1.6 billion discs to 2.9 million this year and DVD outselling other media over Christmas the joint venture expects turnover of $100 million this year. Production of DVDs at Youghal is set to start in the summer. However, Mr Glenn believes the full potential of DVD is yet to be realised and the opportunities could be almost limitless.

"DVD recordable video has the potential to a very big runner because now you're talking true replacements for the VCR with a truly superior product I expect to see that in two to five years," he says.