ROLE. Dow's Gary Gustaf tapes role playing between salesman and purchasing agent. Videotape is sensitivity training, he says

INDUSTRY & BUSINESS

Videotape operations finding their niche Many chemical companies are using the systems for sales training, internal communications, management development, and process research

Videotape operations as an aid to in­ternal communications, management development, sales training, and proc­ess research are becoming increasingly popular among many chemical com­panies, including Du Pont, Union Car­bide, Dow Chemical, and Celanese.

Today, sophistication counts in pre­senting a program, making a proposal, or selling a product, and chemical men are turning to videotape to im­prove their theatrics, to enhance their style. One company president learned that he slurs his words. Another company executive has been found practicing looking gruff. A salesman realized he'd be more successful sell­ing a different chemical.

For companies that invest in video­tape, the payoff on what may entail a $100,000 capital investment and an annual operating cost of $40,000 is difficult to assess, as are public rela­tions and other supporting services. Some consider videotapes such a pow­erful self-teaching technique that they evaluate its payoff by comparing it to the higher priced alternatives of send­ing men to special training courses or bringing in personnel consultants.

In some companies, such as Inter­national Minerals and Chemical, man­agement has overinvested in videotape

by creating audiovisual "command" studios that have simply never paid off. In other companies, manage­ment is cautiously developing video­tape capability with a gimlet eye to measuring the return. Says Union Carbide's Wilford Burglund, manager of marketing services: "We've de­tailed the costs and benefits of video­tape. Beyond question, we know we're getting our money's worth."

In addition to adequate levels of management support and use, a video­tape operation will prove most valu­able when a professional staff is on deck operating the cameras, recorders, and such auxiliary equipment as spe­cial-effects generators and switcher-fader units. As one audiovisual man comments, "You can give an amateur photographer the best of equipment but you'll get only amateur results." In turn, the results are what deter­mine management support.

Union Carbide is completing and equipping an audiovisual studio in its Park Avenue office building which will house the company's central video­tape operations. Its total videotape capability, both in its new studio and in major plant locations, includes nine 1-inch recorders and five asso­ciated cameras, nine 1/2-inch recorders

and nine cameras, and about 15 tele­vision monitors. The company has invested largely in Sony equipment to ensure recording and playback com­patibility throughout the company.

Mr. Burglund mentions that Car­bide's experience with videotape has been a good one. The group has de­veloped a library of nearly 90 active tapes for internal communications-tapes on management talks, super­visory role playing, labor relations training, sales training, and computer seminars. Additionally, he adds, one videotape documenting how a contrac­tor dismantled a piece of equipment proved valuable to Carbide engineers in reassembling it.

Dow Chemical is also moving with videotape as an essential communica­tions medium—so essential, in fact, that it has recently installed coaxial cabling for videotape throughout its new complex of executive offices in Midland, Mich.

Gary Gustaf, television manager of Dow's audiovisual department, says that the company is really just getting started. "Until men work with us in videotape, they're overly conscious of their mannerisms," he says. "We don't want to shape their mannerisms as much as we want them to understand

14 C&EN JUNE 30, 1969

CREDIT. Hewlett-Packard engineers view taped lecture for MASTERS. Engineers make master tapes of classroom lec-graduate credit from Colorado State University ture for Colorado State University's industry program

their relationships to others. Video­tape is sensitivity training."

Dow's videotape capability currently includes two 1-inch Ampex recorders and cameras with monitors at various sales offices and plants throughout the country. Mr. Gustaf estimates that once the videotape operation is in full swing, the company will need five recorders, three cameras, and about 30 monitors.

During the past year, he explains, 90 c/( of the videotape work has been in the area of corporate education-middle management development sem­inars, job performance reviews, sales training, and merchandising studies of consumer attitudes. The other 107i has been in process research, such as monitoring the spinning of plastic coatings onto the insides of paper cups.

Celanese has just finished building a videotape studio in its New York City offices and is now getting started in providing videotape services to the different operating companies. Man­agement has supported videotape and, before the recent shareholders meet­ing, president John Brooks and other executives went through tape re­hearsals for the meeting.

The tape of the meeting itself, says

Celanese's Dana Lombard, coordinator of videotape systems, was edited into a 36-minute program and sent to 12 major plant locations where 80% of the workers viewed the meeting and watched their corporate officers under fire, particularly from the financial analysts present.

In May, the company brought 35 plant engineers, personnel men, and public relations men to New York City for a three-day seminar with Ad­vanced Communications Techniques, Inc., concerning the use of videotape systems.

Du Pont is using videotape ex­tensively in all phases of its internal communications at about 20 locations in the U.S. Typical of the company's widespread use of videotape is the Washington Works plant in Parkers-burg, W.Va., where the group has prepared 28 active tapes during the past year. Some of this activity for reference and training includes:

• Seldom-performed tasks, such as equipment overhauls done every four years, are taped for later study.

• Equipment malfunctions are taped for slow-motion playback and conse­quent analysis.

• A lecture on dealing with alco­holism is taped for supervisors.

AUDIOVISUAL. Union Carbide's audio­visual team videotapes a technical ser­vice presentation in company studio

• Seminars given by company sci­entists and engineers are taped for the technical staff.

• Tapes are exchanged with the plastics plant, Victoria, Tex., on main­tenance procedures for process equip­ment common to both plants.

• Tapes sent from the plastics lab­oratory at the experimental station are used to train laboratory technicians in new analytical procedures.

• A tape recreating a near accident was made for safety training of work­ers in that area.

In addition, a plant open-house was taped for local television.

Carborundum Co.'s John Scherer, manager of organization and manage­ment development, says that the com­pany has been using Ampex videotape equipment in its videotape operations since last year. Some positive results have already been achieved, he notes. The first thing Carborundum did in starting up its videotape opera­tions was to hold a seminar in video­tape production techniques with per­sonnel managers from the operating and staff divisions. At the start, Mr. Scherer says, this seminar gave the company a ready pool of men who could produce and use tapes at various locations.

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