I have been in corrugated packaging for 17 years now. I still find myself inspecting boxes in a store and looking at the bottom flap cert stamp to see what company ran that box, just like I was doing in 1999 when I was an operator running a Flexo.
What is quality packaging? How is it defined? You have the basics like print, glue, and scores but there is much more to quality packaging than that. Premier Packaging is unique in several ways, but our approach to quality packaging begins when our sales representative makes contact with a new customer. Our sales and design teams will work with the new customer to make sure the best solution is reached. Design engineers create prototypes for the customer to review and inspect. The item will go through our On-Boarding Team where managers from each of our departments will sit down and meet along with our On-Boarding Team Coordinator to make sure all the details are hammered out. We have procedures in place that flag new items to our production teams so everyone knows it’s all hands on deck for that first production run.
Our Production teams is where the rubber meets the road. At Premier, we focus on being great at the basics of box making. Print, scores, slots, gaps, glue, die cut register, trim removal, and unit appearance are the basics we pride ourselves on being great at. “We continue to refine our quality” is part of our mission statement.
How do we continue to refine our quality? This is done by auditing. Every week our Production Supervisors and Department Managers conduct one quality audit per shift on a machine crew. That’s 40 audits per week. What are we auditing? We are auditing our machine crews on our Quality System. We engage our crews on a daily basis with training and quality expectations that build a culture of a sustainable quality oriented work force. Engagement is the foundation of how we conduct these audits. When we have an issue we conduct a solid root-cause using methods like the 5 whys and fishbone diagrams. We will form a team and create a solid sustainable corrective action that will be audited to ingrain the process change into the DNA of our plant.
Quality Packaging at Premier doesn’t stop there. Unit appearance and shipping is the final piece to make the process complete. We inspect units for dunnage placement and correct banding. We use cube utilization to ensure the customer gets the most space out of a trailer. Customer Service and Shipping constantly communicate on dock times to ensure the customer gets their product on time.
Our service is second to none when it comes to hot orders or when our customer gets in a bind. Premier’s focus on quality packaging covers a broad range but we have solid procedures in place as well as an engaged workforce that sets us apart from the rest.