October 2005

Cleaning Up

Continued from page 1

By Charles Fishman

In fact, Corning didn't place just one bet on diesel antipollution devices--the market for which should grow quickly as stiff antipollution laws come into force around the world. Tom Hinman, head of diesel technologies at Corning; CTO Miller; and the Corning board made a pair of bets. The first was to build a factory to supply a market that didn't exist. The cost: $370 million. Total sales of Corning's diesel mitigation business the year the factory was approved: $12 million.

The second bet was even more daring. Corning abandoned the industry-standard filtration technology for diesel cars. As competitors scooped up business, and as construction proceeded on the new factory, Corning ordered up not just a new product from its research labs but a whole new materials-science breakthrough on which to base that product.

"We made a lonely choice," says Hinman. The existing ceramic material for diesel filters worked fine but was difficult and expensive to manufacture. Hinman's team thought it could come up with a new material that was as effective against pollution, more durable, and half as expensive for carmakers.

The company bet not just on the market--which it expects to be $1 billion a year in 2008, and to grow from there--but on its own heritage of inventiveness. In 2004, 90 percent of Corning's sales came from products less than four years old. Corning scientists have often come up with technology solutions under time and market pressure; in fact, they developed the material for catalytic converters under goading from automakers faced with the Clean Air Act of 1970.

The diesel R&D group ended up taking two years to zero in on the right material for diesel-engine filters--aluminum titanate--but it checked in with senior management every six weeks, and more often when necessary. "It was tough sledding," says Hinman. "You see the competition moving on....It required tremendous confidence."

Corning is already making heavy-duty diesel-engine filters at its new Erwin, NY, plant. Production of car filters--using the new aluminum titanate ceramic--should start before year's end.

Miller came to Corning in July 2001 as CTO, and he says that cutting R&D spending was very painful--but also instructive. "There is nothing," says Miller, "like that kind of experience to temper what you're hearing, to be sure you don't just look at these things with rose-colored glasses. "Even in a science-driven company, he says, "there is no algorithm to guide you on these decisions." -- By Charles Fishman