Night and day, every day of the year, more than 100,000 kilograms of molten glass glow so hot and bright in a furnace in Rio Claro, Brazil, that it cannot be viewed with the naked eye or approached too closely without the observer being burned. Through the dark lenses of a special face shield, one can briefly glimpse through a small porthole what looks like lava in a man-made volcano.

At the rate of several tons an hour, raw materials -- including dolomite, aluminum, kaolin, and sodium carbonate -- are fed into the top of the furnace, while an equal amount of 1,600-degree-Celsius liquid glass flows out of its tank into an orange-hot river that runs above the "forming stations" nearby. In a fraction of a second, the glass runs through thousands of small holes and is transformed from hot to cool -- from turbulent to delicate -- and wound onto large spools of the final product: fiberglass.

"I have been here for fifteen years, and I am still amazed at the process we have," says worker Jose Duil Dos Santos, speaking in Portuguese. "You just don't see it every day."

Given the extremes inside Owens Corning's fiberglass facility, located 172 kilometers from São Paulo, it's not surprising that there is a tremendous emphasis on the materials and equipment needed to make the job safe, comfortable, and productive. But the spirit of employee participation and the practice of refining tools inside "Fiberglass," as the local residents call the plant, is a model for teams working under less demanding conditions.

When Gallup researchers went in search of the aspects of work life that are most important to performance, one that emerged earliest was measured by the statement "I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right." The facility at Rio Claro epitomizes the Second Element of great managing in action. (See sidebar "The 12 Elements of Great Managing" at the end of this article and "The Second Element of Great Managing" in the "See Also" area on this page.)

It all started with fiberglass

Despite the many other products it sells, which now make up the majority of its revenue, Owens Corning is a company that was created by the invention and production of fiberglass. In 1932, Owens-Illinois researcher Dale Kleist accidentally pointed a jet of compressed air at a stream of molten glass. It sprayed and stretched the material into thin fibers -- a fortuitous breakthrough.

Corning Incorporated was pursuing a similar line of research. In 1938, the companies combined their efforts to form Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation, famous in the United States for its trademarked pink building insulation. The Brazil subsidiary, Owens Corning Fiberglas A.S. Limitada, still carries the fiberglass designation that the parent company removed in 1996.

The Rio Claro facility has been making fiberglass since 1971. The basic process has not changed much, because the chemistry and physics of creating the filaments remain the same. Gravity, a stream of air, and the already hardened portion of the filament pull a thin strand from each of 2,400 small holes under the channel of hot, liquid glass. A spray of water cools the filaments, and a roller wet with chemicals changes them from fragile glass to flexible fiberglass.

While the essence of the process hasn't changed, many of the details have improved, often through the suggestions of employees. "The one who knows what he needs is the one doing the job," says Enio Wetten, a 27-year veteran of the plant and the unassuming manager at the heart of the operation.

Wetten supervises a group of 10 managers and 70 employees who maintain the facility around the clock. "Everything here depends on the furnace," he says. Other parts of the plant, such as the machinery that weaves filaments into fiberglass cloth, can stop for events as important as a machinery problem or as innocuous as the lunch break. But the furnace is too difficult to restart if it stops, so it runs continuously.

As with any business unit, the suggestions for improvements in Rio Claro cover a wide spectrum, from those that can be accommodated easily, such as larger safety glasses, to major capital improvements that can be years in the making, if they happen at all.

Properly supplying employees works in the company's favor in two ways. From a purely functional perspective, having the right tools makes a job safer, easier, and more productive. "The first thing we think is safety," says Wetten. "We always ask ourselves, 'What are the risks?' We work with high temperatures. We work with flammables, such as gasoline. We work with oxygen. The equipment we have should be the best we can get."

Equally important, the employee's perception that the company backs him up with the equipment he wants and needs serves as a powerful psychological motivator. "This is a company focused on its people, which makes me feel confident about my job," says Dos Santos.

Consider the gloves worn by the "slivers," the employees at Rio Claro who fix interruptions in the flow of filaments from the forming stations onto spools one floor below. Without gloves, the employees risk getting their hands punctured by small shards that break off the speeding fibers. With gloves, they have more difficulty feeling the filaments, which are only 10 to 15 microns wide -- about the width of a human hair.

"The first gloves we had weren't comfortable, so the safety department provided gloves that we like," says Rogerio Nodari, a sliver at the plant. "I need to feel the strings and to feel safe. Little things like this make a huge difference for us." Dos Santos, who is experimenting with a new type of glove, agreed. "The gloves allow you to do your work better, [while] not being worried about injuring your hands."

Slivers carry a small red metal tool that resembles a comb. They use this tool to separate the fibers while rethreading the machinery. Having just the right size with the right spacing between the teeth makes the job easier. "We are always experimenting with different combs," says Wetten.

Copyright Ó 2007 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission.  Visit The Gallup Management Journal at http://gmj.gallup.com/

Article from The Gallup Management Journal