Word: nucor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Blytheville, Ark. Situated in one of the most impoverished sections of the U.S., the Mississippi River town (pop. 24,000) has outdone itself trying to make Japanese business people feel welcome. In 1985, when Blytheville first learned that the Japanese steel firm Yamato Kogyo and North Carolina-based Nucor were looking for a 500-acre site to build a jointly owned mill, the townspeople rallied to action. The school system agreed to add extra English classes and hire special tutors. The Cotton Boll Vocational and Technical School promised low-cost training to help Japanese technicians adjust to U.S. industry standards...
...Arkansans kept up their wooing even after the bride was won. Once Nucor and Yamato picked Blytheville for the $230 million mill, the town chose eight civic leaders to travel to Japan at public expense to see what more could be done. Shortly after ground was broken for the plant in 1987, tempura and stir- fried dishes were on the menu at the Holiday Inn and townspeople were flocking to seminars on Japanese culture and business...
...Nucor and Chaparral are leaders in a new class of companies that make steel in what are called minimills: small, low-cost plants that utilize state-of-the-art technology and, in most cases, nonunion labor. These factories contain none of the costly blast furnaces used to transform raw materials into steel. Instead, they take scrap steel, melt it down and reshape it into new forms. The minimills fashion small, specialized steel products rather than huge beams and sheets. Nucor's steel can be found, for example, in reinforcing rods for concrete walls, traffic barricades and lawnmowers...
Since it entered the minimill business only 14 years ago, Nucor has built seven plants in South Carolina, Texas, Nebraska and Utah. President Kenneth Iverson links his company's success to its modern equipment and employee-incentive program...
...workers produce, they are paid bonuses as large as 200% of their base salaries. Says Iverson: "People think that because we're in the South and are nonunion, our workers make less, but we reward high productivity." He contends that in 1981 the average blue-collar worker at Nucor made $30,000, in contrast to $28,500 at the large steel companies. But that Nucor worker, Iverson maintains, churned out about 850 tons of steel during the year, while employees at the big firms averaged only 350 tons...