Graymills (Cont’d from Page 1)
that acts as a bridge between the shop floor and en- gineering. The push is a part of the company’s ongo- ing Lean Manufacturing initiatives.The purpose of the E.P.E.T is to provide employees ownership and support of bottom up ideas for process improvements that pro- mote safety,production efficiencies and cultural change as it pertains to Lean manufacturing concepts. “The idea, in it’s simplest terms,” said company Pres- ident Kristen Shields,“is to get everyone involved. Ev- ery single person in the company is responsible for quality control; it’s not relegated to just one depart- ment. If someone sees a product on the floor they feel does meet our standards, they tag it immediately and send it back. Everyone has the power to do this.This helps achieve our goal of making certain that each item we manufacture for a customer leaves the plant in the best possible condition.” “The embracing of Lean manufacturing in the short term is a cultural mind set shift of accuracy vs. speed,” said Joe Lebron, Jr.Manager,Manufacturing Operations. “For far too long the emphasis was to ship product out the door and ‘do what needs to be done’ ,which result- ed in everyone bypassing and not documenting the proper corrections or needed process changes.” These shifts in attitude and procedure can help break down the walls that have existed between the shop and engineering for years, even decades, according to the company. History Of Leadership Graymills Corporation was founded in 1939 as a builder of machine tool pumps and five years later en- tered the parts washing business to increase the use of its pumps to meet the needs of the growing auto industry. It was in 1953 that the company began working with the nascent flexographic printing industry to create pumps, filters and accessories specifically for converters. In the 1960s, Graymills was asked by a leading ink company to make special pumps for the new gener- ation of liquid inks and was soon developing pumps that were not merely adapted to printing but were specifically manufactured with inks, coatings, and unique needs of the pressroom in mind. FTA Hall of Fame member Jerry Shields came on board with the company in 1970 as a Sales and Mar- keting Manager and a decade later, purchased the com- pany. Shields oversaw the construction of an assembly and metal fabricating addition to the company’s facil- ity and actively began to broaden Graymills’ interna- tional business efforts. In the 1990s, Graymills engineered the first peristal-
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Flexo Market News September 16, 2019 5
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