Automation (CONT’D FROM PAGE 20)
Wood: How about well onboarded people. There's a say- ing that culture trumps strategy every time. You can have a great strategy to train, but if you don't have a great strate- gy or a great ability to inculcate someone in a culture and create a proper culture, you're still going to be in trouble. Connell: Which do you think is more realistic goal? Is it to be more productive with a similar number of people or more productive with fewer value people? Thomas: I would say the latter, but fewer value people, meaning more competent, capable people that are able to work on a machine as opposed to being the machine, as I heard it a recent previous AICC conference. With us, we're doing a project we're calling Project 521. We’ve done the first stage of it where we've taken five people down to four. We're trying to now eliminate three other positions. One of the big differences with us, with a rigid box com- pany, we're putting our graphics on when the boxes are in three-dimensional format, so between that and packing three-dimensional products, it's a lot of human interven- tion. Connell: When you replace those people with automation are they repurposed or do they usually disappear?
Connell: Is that a training or retention issue? Wood: Retention, availability of people to hire, I don't think anyone in this room in the last two years was able to fill every position they wanted to fill.
Jeremy Cohen (left) and Keith Thomas.
Connell: Do you think well trained people tend to hang around longer than those that weren't really given a fight- ing chance?
Thomas: I think the disappearance will be through normal
CONTINUED ON PAGE 24
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