Flex Time
Lauri Union manages UCC from Boston, where she lives with her husband and two young children. While her early years at the company required more time on-site in North Carolina, she’s managed to scale back her trips to two or three a month thanks to sophisticated communication systems that include detailed weekly reports from UCC’s sales force and senior managers. As long as her days may be — talking on the phone with customers, following up on issues raised during a weekly conference call with senior management, tracking production at UCC’s seven plants — she’s able to walk downstairs and have dinner with her family most evenings, an enviable commute.
“It’s been very rewarding to make this work,” says Union. “It may not have seemed possible initially, but sometimes we set up our own restrictions of what can and can’t be done.” Asked what she enjoys about the field of manufacturing, Union describes the pure pleasure of making a tangible, useful product. “Man-ufacturing offers so many analytical and intellectual challenges,” she adds. “It’s extremely satisfying to build a corporate culture and improve a business over a long horizon.”
Jim Sharpe of Extrusion Technology agrees. “I enjoy creating an environment that allows our employees to learn and change,” he says. “The labor force we hire from is generally less skilled, and we’re able to provide our workers with opportunities to grow that they wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere.”
Many alumni interviewed for this article also mentioned the degree of flexibility manufacturing offers. Although Linda Katz of Molded Dimensions has been spending more time at home with the couple’s three children, she’s begun to make the transition back into her role as CEO. The Katzes say that owning a company and working together has been a lifelong dream (they met while working at a GE Aerospace plant in Syracuse, New York). “Linda’s better at clearly defining goals and responsibilities and then holding people to the task,” Michael Katz remarks. “I’m better at selling and working with the financial community. We make a pretty good team.”
Mutual respect for one another’s abilities is the critical ingredient for husbands and wives who work together, says Debby Stein-Sharpe (MBA ’81), who works alongside Jim as Extrusion Technology’s treasurer. “We have very clearly defined areas of responsibility. I’m staff, and Jim is the boss — I’m real clear about that. I give my opinion, but if he doesn’t follow my advice, I don’t take it personally,” she adds. Flexible hours allow Sharpe to be at home when the couple’s three teenage children come home from school. “I may go into the office after dinner and stay until midnight or so, but I’m able to be around at other times — it’s wonderful,” says Sharpe.
