Establishing teams in a 24-hour seven-day work week environment

Continuous improvement and customer satisfaction is leading NCR-Microelectronics Manufacturing organization to form teams and emphasize teamwork in the wafer fabrication area. The team formation is to improve quality in manufacturing and employee worklife, and to make the organization more competitive. The team approach is being utilized to bring the operators to the focal point of continuous improvement in the manufacturing environment. Operators are to run the teams and to participate more in decisions concerning their jobs and process improvements. Teams are also a way to increase the communications between operators, maintenance, engineering, and management. The way to start is to determine a structure for the team approach by deciding how to incorporate all five shifts and the four functional areas of diffusion, photo, thin films, and etch into a team. The structure of the teams is to have four superteams from each functional area that would have a representative from each shift. The team-establishment process is described, and associated problems are discussed