PFFC - December 2008 - (Page 28) CARTON & BOX REPORTER GREEN CONVERTING TO N & PORTER X RE BO Cartons Lighten Up Through lean manufacturing, PSI strives to eliminate waste, which helps customers raise their sustainability profiles and improve their marks on Wal-Mart’s Packaging Scorecard. By Edward Boyle, Contributing Editor ON RT X CA BO ED & ND N PA EX DITIO E E R CARTON & BOX TO TON CAR PO RT ER Greg Smith, president of PSI, says lean and green are key to becoming a worldclass manufacturer. A dvances in technology usually are good for a company’s success, especially in the converting industry. But that certainly wasn’t the case for Printed Specialties Inc. (PSI), which was established solely to convert labels and jacket covers for vinyl records and albums for Columbia Records in 1982—ironically the same year the compact disc made its debut. What really might have been PSI’s death knell, however, sounded seven years later when Sony bought Columbia, and Shorewood Packaging took over production of record labels and album sleeves. By then, albums already had begun to go the way of the gramophone. Says PSI president Greg Smith, “It was either close the plant or diversify.” Now, more than 20 years later, PSI is one of the country’s premier suppliers of folding cartons for such diverse markets as health and beauty, medical, con- sumer goods, gourmet foods, hardware, software, and yes, home entertainment. Smith credits its fast five- to six-day turnarounds and the adoption of lean manufacturing and sustainable development practices as just a few of the keys to its ongoing success. “We’ve always had flexibility,” says Smith. “One of the reasons is that we’re a small company with 48 employees, and we behave like a small company. All our decisions are made locally, and we are very flexible in how we work with clients. Our goal is to be a world-class manufacturer, and how we get there is through lean manufacturing and our ability to produce things very quickly and very efficiently with a minimum of waste.” The printing and converting equipment at its 40,000-sq-ft facility includes six-color Komori sheet-fed presses, die-cutters and folder/gluers from Bobst, Kohmann window machines, and a Brausse hot foil stamper/embosser. Smith says this equipment is critical to PSI’s outstanding quality and quick turnarounds. 28 | DECEMBER 2008 WWW.PFFC-ONLINE.COM http://WWW.PFFC-ONLINE.COM
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