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Pilkington Libbey-Owens-Ford Streamlines Automotive Manufacturing

26 May 1999

Pilkington Libbey-Owens-Ford Streamlines Automotive Manufacturing

    TOLEDO, Ohio, May 26 -- Pilkington Libbey-Owens-Ford
announced today that it is reorganizing and streamlining its automotive
original-equipment manufacturing operations.
    The reorganization involves closing a plant in Texas, and optimizing
capacity at facilities in Ontario, Canada, and Indiana.
    Pilkington produces automotive glass components such as windshields, side
windows and back windows, as well as modular components that include value-
added molded and encapsulated features.
    The company will close a plant located in Sherman, Texas.  The transfer of
production to other facilities will begin this summer and will be completed by
the fourth quarter of calendar year 2000.  The transition will be managed to
ensure that customer deliveries are maintained and quality expectations are
met.  The Sherman plant has about 400 employees.
    At the same time, Pilkington will invest $22 million to optimize capacity
at its plants in Collingwood, Ontario, and Shelbyville, Indiana.  This will
involve upgrading some equipment and lines and debottlenecking the production
flow.
    The Collingwood plant produces windshields, and the Shelbyville facility
produces tempered glass parts such as side windows, back windows and sunroofs.
The planned process improvements will boost production capacity at Collingwood
by more than 10 percent and at Shelbyville by more than 25 percent.  Most of
the work currently carried out at Sherman will be moved to Collingwood and
Shelbyville.
    "These fundamental changes will help us eliminate excess capacity,
debottleneck certain processes and create a more cost-effective operation that
can meet the demands of the current automotive market," said Warren Knowlton,
president, Pilkington Automotive worldwide.  "We have a responsibility to
deploy our assets in a way that provides maximum quality, service and value
for our customers."
    This reorganization follows a similar move in November 1998, when the
company closed a plant in Lindsay, Ontario, and consolidated its production of
encapsulated glass components at two plants in Michigan.
    Pilkington Libbey-Owens-Ford is owned by the Pilkington Group, a global
glass-making firm based in the United Kingdom, and by Nippon Sheet Glass,
another international glass producer, based in Japan.  In addition to
automotive glass components for the original-equipment market, Pilkington LOF
produces glass products  for the automotive aftermarket, and for building and
architectural applications.  Pilkington LOF sales for fiscal year 1998 (ended
March 31, 1998) totaled $1.1 billion.