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CPGs Lean on OEMs During the Pandemic

From equipment startups to training to more automation, manufacturers are asking machine builders to adopt new technology and service roles in difficult times.

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In October, PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies held a virtual Annual Meeting that covered topics ranging from an economic update to cybersecurity vigilance. In addition, this year a customer panel discussion featured engineers from three CPG manufacturers: Wilken Benjamin, principal packaging equipment engineer at Rich Products Corp., John Giles, manager of Ada engineering at Amway, and Joe Zembas, senior manager, reliability engineering at J.M. Smucker Company. During an hour-long conversation they discussed COVID-19 issues, equipment updates, training, safety, security, and more with OEM editor-in-chief Stephanie Neil.

 

Stephanie Neil: How would you describe your business condition right now? Business as usual, controlled chaos, out of the box problem solving?

 

Joe Zembas: All of your statements are very true. Here at J.M. Smucker Company we are predominantly a retail company, but we do have a good portion of our business in the food service channel as well. When everyone shut down restaurants several months ago it definitely hurt our food service segment, but meanwhile, everyone was filling their pantry and eating at home more. There were a lot of PB&Js being made. And we had to fill shelves that had been stripped. Back in March, if you were to go to the grocery store, half of the shelves were empty. Plants were taxed with making more than what they were previously making. We saw a significant rachet up in the need to get product out, keep shelves full, and keep people and pets fed. And, as our corporate environment had gone to working virtually, it had thrown caveats into the way we get work accomplished. So it was controlled chaos, business as usual, it was everything.

 

John Giles: I agree with lot of points Joe made, particular with the controlled chaos, but not so much with the business as usual. There was a lot of out of box problem solving for us and defining a new normal. I hear the comments that we’ll return to normal and all will go back to the way it was, but I don’t think that’s the case. We’ll define a new normal and I see our company doing that [for example, figuring] out who needs to be in the office is a big issue for us. We are still in phase two of restricting the people who can come on campus. We are able to do more jobs remotely than we ever thought possible. The difficulty we are facing is understanding how well is that job performance going with people working remotely and what are we getting out of it. That is still yet to be determined, particularly in the groups I’m in. But we are extremely busy with projects and don’t see any let up in that in the future either.

The hourly production workers are extremely busy [because] with the products vanishing off of the shelves there is a high demand to produce….So a big focus for us is working with those hourly people. It is a little more straight-forward with COVID guidelines, but to keep up with the latest and greatest is our biggest challenge there.

 

Wilken Benjamin: There is some controlled chaos, obviously, but a lot of business as usual.  When we started looking at the scenarios in March it was absolutely chaos. But as the business has turned and the environment has changed, it is getting back to business as usual in a sense.  Just like John said, we are still trying to figure out the corporate thing—who is coming to work, who is not. Right now there are more corporate folks at home, but the business is figuring out that business can get done being at home.

 

Stephanie Neil: You have to have people in the plant and on the packing line and you have to keep them safe and productive. Has that been a difficult problem to solve? And is that something that you have to solve or corporate has to solve?

 

Wilken Benjamin: It is on a plant to plant basis and the guideline are driven by the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] in terms of what things you need to do at the plant level to keep people safe, and it is really about keeping people separated and understanding how we can still drive productivity. We found in some cases our lines work more efficiently because people are working independently and are not as distracted as they would have been with someone working with them side-by-side. It’s an interesting dynamic in that aspect. But I think we’ve done a good job of keeping them safe. Now it’s more of challenge trying to meet the demands of the business.

 

Stephanie Neil: How do you manage people coming into the plant, such as a service technician coming in to work on a machine? Have you reevaluated how you manage the process and the people?


Joe Zembas: Yes, if you go back to March there was no guideline. We had to be agile and fluid about how we were doing it. We put checklists together following CDC guidelines and we’ve continued to adapt that system. We cut back as much as possible on external visits and instituted checklists before people come on site, like thermal monitoring of individuals when they come on sight. And we’ve also looked at what kind of systems we need to put in place to help that be effective. Before, when a tractor trailer showed up with a load of packing materials, a lot of papers would go back and forth and there were interactions that had to go on. We’ve moved a lot of that to now being paperless by leveraging the technology out there that is available. We are working through touchless invoicing and transactions with truck drivers... and put an extra level of safety in place for the truckers and the people on site who are interacting with them.

 

Stephanie Neil: A recent PMMI business indicator poll asked members what their biggest obstacle was as of late and they focused on supply chain as a disruptions. Are you having the same experience?


Wilken Benjamin: I’m an equipment engineer so I’m generally focused on the end product, but I do hear on work team meetings where supply chain is an issue in getting raw materials. The biggest thing for me is equipment OEMs and lead times being extended when it came down to steel and trying to cut in different equipment.  We’ve had some issues where lead times that would normally be in the neighborhood of 16 to 18 weeks would now be 32 weeks.

 

Stephanie Neil: What does it do to the organization when you have extended lead times?

 

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