Quality

Corning has been in business for nearly 170 years, working with customers to solve tough technology challenges. From the glass encasement for Thomas Edison’s lightbulb in 1879 to the first low-loss optical fiber in 1970, one principle has guided our actions and facilitated our success: Quality.

Quality is our way of doing business, every day, and demands continuous improvement in our processes, products, and services. It is a founding principle upon which our optical fiber business was established, and every aspect of our operations continues to be driven by this commitment.

Corning is committed to quality, before, during, and after delivery. Our employees have received thousands of patents, developing products and technologies that have shaped the communications landscape. Throughout our history, we have participated on standards bodies and driven countless industry standards, developing many of the processes that are still in use today. Our efforts have been recognized with numerous accreditations and awards, including the prestigious Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award.

Our quality architecture – design, production, and packaging – ensures our manufacturing process is operated in a stable, consistent manner.  At Corning, quality is built into the manufacturing process from start to finish, it is not inserted at the end. And with more than 1 billion kilometers of fiber produced, the results are evident.

At our Center for Fiber Optic Testing (CFT), Corning engineers conduct the industry’s most rigorous specification tests to ensure our optical fiber works from installation through its expected lifetime. Fiber attenuation, dispersion, bandwidth, environmental tolerances, performance, stripping and splicing attributes, strength, fatigue, and more are tested to ensure product quality and longevity.

At our CFT, fiber properties are measured against our own demanding criteria, as well as required industry standards. Measurements developed at the CFT are reproduced at our optical fiber manufacturing facilities, where we have the ability to trace every strand of fiber produced and can identify where and when it was manufactured, whether it is still on the spool, or if it was sold years ago.

As a result, we know that optical fiber cables recovered from the field years after installation still meet the specifications against which they were installed, a testament to the rigor and integrity of the CFT’s processes.

Corning has set the standard for quality in the telecommunications industry, beginning more than 50 years ago when three Corning scientists developed the first low-loss optical fiber. Watch as those scientists describe the invention that set us on our journey to total quality, and the impact it still has today.