Above & Beyond by Jeff Meiners You’ve heard the sayings…going the extra mile – pulling a rabbit out of the hat – hitting it out of the ball park – kicking butt and taking names. The new project recently put to bed in the contract packaging division brings all of those into play plus, just maybe, a little bit more. The folks who work in packaging are used to short turn-arounds…it is just part of the program when it comes to how we handle our packaging business. A recent major new project at Crest took us all to the edge of our limits. The end results have been fantastic, but this story is about what happened over 49 days and nights to take this proj- ect from an idea to product being produced on the line. A trial run for our new project left us with the sudden realization that it would not be possible to run this project in the area we intended for a variety of reasons. We were in a tough situation on a piece of business we did not want to jeopardize. That realization was on August 20th. The go ahead for a new plan that involved the literal construc- tion of a new production area was given on September 3rd. We ran our first product in that new area on October 22nd. That is nothing short of an impossible time frame for what we were able to accomplish. Our new production room was built inside of our warehouse in a walled off area that had been designated for stor- age of aromatic ingredients when it was originally built…so we had four walls and some cooling in place when we started. In 44 days, we needed to design a production area, engineer footings for floor loads, tear up existing floor, pour footings, re-install flooring, build and install a 60x60 steel mezzanine, paint, install all electrical, install a sprinkler system, install lighting, run vacuum and air and clean it all up and turn it over to maintenance to set up the line. Our suppliers and internal staff were fantastic! We’ve always said that you develop years of relationships with people and companies that pay dividends in moments just like this. Bennett Construction, Beesing Welding, Quality Electric, Automatic Fire, White’s Painting and our own internal Building Maintenance Team (Steve Zera, Brian Schafer, Dusty Koch, Peyton Brown, Jason Drew, Wally Karper and Ben Esgar) carried the load for us often work- ing long hours and seven day weeks. This type of project just doesn’t get done in the amount of time that it was done in…but somehow this dedicated group of individuals pulled it off. We couldn’t be prouder of the team effort that it took to make this all happen. Once the room was complete, the maintenance and engineering groups were quick to assemble the new equipment that was designated for this production area and we hit the ground running with our start-up. This was the third major start-up in a series of four that occurred over a three month period of time involving mostly new equipment on large scale projects that were handled by our internal maintenance and engineering staff. They balanced these projects while handling our existing volume during the busiest season of our year without missing a beat…once again, a huge effort that has produced nothing but great results. Being and staying busy is the name of the game in our packaging business, but I’m sure all involved are looking forward to some well-deserved time off during the holiday season. Our sincerest thanks go out to all who were involved with making these projects happen from start to finish and maintaining our reputation as a company that can rise to any challenge put before us. Pictures to the right were taken over the course of 49 days. From putting in footers and installing the mezzanine to a finished production room.
14 Crest Ink January, February & March 2019
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