ChemWorld | 5 | January 1991
Uniroyal Chemical Names Annual Quality Award Winners and Career Achievement Recipient
During a formal awards ceremony that took place Wednesday, November 28, 1990 in Middlebury, Connecticut, Robert Henrichs and John Boyd were chosen as Annual Winners of the company’s 1990 Quality Recognition Program. Louis Coscia was named the recipient of the company’s lifetime Career Achievement Award.
Robert Henrichs, a maintenance mechanic in Naugatuck, Connecticut, was chosen as a quality winner during the first quarter fiscal year 1990 for his innovation in designing a cleaning bath for the Naugard® Q Rotoformer Drop Forming Sleeve, which substantially reduced cleaning time and resulted in greater productivity and cost savings for the company. Bob also devised a procedure to train other mechanics in the cleaning method.
Originally hired as a millwright mechanic, Bob has worked in the maintenance department and in various facets of production for the majority of his years with Uniroyal Chemical. Bob recently celebrated his 40th anniversary with the company.
As a process engineer at the Geismar, Louisiana facility, John Boyd was chosen as a three-time winner during the second quarter fiscal year 1990 for three separate contributions to the quality program: an individual effort that determined a solution to random process variation in Celogen® OT production; a member of an Adopt-A-Customer Team which helped lead to new BHT business from a major customer; and a member of the White Gold Quality Circle which helped to increase Celogen® OT product quality and productivity at minimum cost, and produced several safety improvements in the process.
John has been with Uniroyal Chemical for approximately two and a half years, and has recently been assigned area foreman responsibilities in the Celogen® AZ production unit.
As recipient of Uniroyal Chemical’s
Robert J. Mazaika congratulates Louis Coscia (second from right), recipient of the Uniroyal Chemical 1990 Career Achievement Award. Robert Henrichs (far left) from Naugatuck, CT and John Boyd (far right) from Geismar, LA were chosen as the Annual Quality Recognition Winners for 1990.
lifetime Career Achievement Award, Louis Coscia, senior quality specialist, has brought outstanding leadership and focus to a total quality program.
After joining Uniroyal Chemical in 1952, Lou began to lay the foundation for future total quality programs. He reorganized analytical testing which led to the first plant control labs supported by a central service organization. He was appointed labor relations coordinator for the laboratory management team, where he promoted the concepts of trust, listening, patience and understanding.
Lou also continued to spearhead plans that recognized the importance of sophisticated instrumentation for quality control and acquired new types of computers and laboratory instrumentation to support this process.
As worldwide competitiveness took hold in the 1980’s, Lou developed and implemented many company-wide programs that taught how to compete in a global technological society. Lou also helped form the R&D Safety Council after he recognized the synergy between quality and safety, and helped facilitate the development of “Excellence Modeling” as a technique for continuing quality improvement in different areas of the company. Most recently, he played an integral role in helping Geismar become the first company plant to receive quality certification for sale of products in the European marketplace. ■
New Product Technologies And Global Expansion Drive C&P Division
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Q. In your opinion, what effect will the recent global consolidation and/or mergers of major tire companies have on the rubber chemicals business?
A. As I see it, globalization will make it imperative that rubber chemical producers supply all global manufacturing plants with consistent, high quality products and service that meet international specification standards at competitive prices, with consideration to duties, transportation costs, and exchange rates, to name but a few.
Q. What plans does the division have for international expansion?
A. Unikor, our joint venture with Hahn Jung in Korea for rubber chemicals is just about completed, and we anticipate a dedication of that facility in the first calendar quarter of 1991. We are also pursuing a joint venture opportunity in Thailand for Rubber Chemicals. We’ve licensed our Royalene EPDM technology, in cooperation with Sumitomo Chemical, to Yukong Petrochemical in Korea, with a plant currently under construction. Additionally, we have licensed our EPDM technology to Herdillia Unimers in India, and have taken an equity position in that operation, with a plant in final engineering design. Premier Chemical in Taiwan has added significant capacity (since the plant opened ten years ago, it has had a four-fold increase in capacity). Most of the capacity has been for export, and today, our business there is 50 percent indigenous and 50 percent export. A year and a half ago, we acquired polyurethane coating systems from WRM® Systems in Australia, and we are expanding this technology into Canada and Brazil in addition to Australia. We’re also developing alliances with several Eastern Bloc countries and will see how the alliances progress before we get more definitive about equity involvement.
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