By Susan Caba
The new general manager of Granite City Steel Works, a division of U.S. Steel, began her career in the steel industry as an intern in college.
Sharon Owen, named GM in March, learned the business while earning her degree in chemical engineering at Purdue University, working alternate semesters in quality control at the nearby U.S. Steel Plant. The internship gave her the opportunity to work on a variety of projects and she’s been with the company ever since.
“When I started, I was definitely the first at this level, the first at various jobs,” she says. “For a long time, I was pretty unique, but there are more and more women working in steel now.”
U.S. Steel acquired the Granite City plant in 2003, when it took over National Steel and became the industry’s largest steel producer. The Granite City operation has 2,300 employees and produces 2.8 million tons of steel a year. It’s an integrated plant, taking in raw materials and producing a variety of finished products for the appliance, automotive and construction industries.
What’s the most efficient or productive time of day for you?
Definitely early morning. Steel people are mostly morning people. Our business is 24/7. I start at the office around six in the morning. It gives me a chance to wrap up what happens overnight and to organize what will happen during the day.
What is the most creative aspect of your work? What is the least creative or least satisfying?
Solving problems, removing roadblocks. We have metrics that we need to meet—drivers of our business. Safety, environment, quality, customer service, cost. The most satisfying aspect of my job is to improve on those metrics. (For example), if you’re supposed to produce so many tons at a facility and you don't, you look at the delays and then prioritize the potential reasons. One by one, starting with the easiest, you work through them to solve the problem. All our facilities have tons per day objectives and tons per term.
You look at the trends and work at the problems. A lot of them are long-standingÉwe are trying to increase productivity over time by looking at our processes, having people do things in a different way. We're seeing the rate go up over time. Working with the people and implementing teamwork—that's always very satisfying.
How do you use devices and electronicsÑBlackberries, cell phones, iPodsÑto manage work flow? Are they, on balance, more often a tool or a hindrance?
I’ve consolidated. I have a Blackberry Pearl and I use it for my cell phone, calendar, and all my e-mail. That way I have one device and one charger. It has the capability to do everything I need. That's helped me a lot. I can use it to check on the status of our plant, using our website.
What is the most distracting element of your workday/workweek? How do you manage it?
I run different functions in the plant—staff groups, safety and environmental groups, customer service and quality control. The most distracting thing is mostly trying to juggle all the information and the meetings, keeping the important things high on the list and keeping priorities straight.
If there is one thing you would like to do differently in the average workday, what is it? Why don’t you do it?
There is never enough time that you can spend time with the people in the operation. I would like to carve out time in each day to walk through an area, see and talk to people while they are working, get their ideas and thoughts. Those are the things that tend to get squeezed out when there is a meeting scheduled or something else on the agenda.
What are some of your rules for success?
There are very few things you can solve on your own. I believe in success through teamwork. It’s the same in every industry, knowing how to work with people,
with teams.
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