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materials and the overall size. And the AI makes the struc- ture and creates the building materials within 25 minutes. But getting IT to be comfortable with that was difficult. And I think it's a learning point for IT as welL, a new frontier. Anderson: One thing that sticks out to me is the ques- tion of whether your IT leadership is an order taker or a vision maker. And I think most folks in the plant will view IT as you should be an order taker. If you bring in some soft- ware application, you need to configure the heck out of it to ensure it fits my process. I would also say that I favor IT as the vision maker. I think more often than not we would do better in our busi-
ness at all. Fast forward 35 years and it's inconceivable that any of us would lead a business where employees do not have email access. We would probably go out of business without email access. I look at agentic AI similarly, like we're the equivalent of 35 years ago with email. That's kind of where we are with agentic AI. And what I mean by agentic AI are true agents that are enabled and empowered and authorized to go out and perform tasks, that are authorized to scan through emails, shipping systems and bills of lading, to then send
automatic notices to customers. For me, the things Agen- tic AI can do is a little scary. I mean, personally, I'm not yet allowing an agent to crawl through my emails. Ochi: What does plant leadership and the whole team sometimes underestimate about bringing new technology, whether it's AI or physical equipment. Also, what does IT sometimes underestimate about running the plant? Anderson: It's all about managing change. In our IT department, we're lucky enough to have a lot of people who've worked on the plant floor and that’s a benefit. How- ever, it may also make people very resistant to change the status quo. Managing change getting is about people ex- cited about what the result is, creating an understanding an environment that they want to change, or at least that they're less resistant to change, then I think you have an opportunity to get a lot of wonderful things done. Keslin: We just rolled out these tools to all these em- ployees that have just gone, ‘Oh my gosh, where has this been all my life? I just built the perfect dashboard for my- self! It does exactly what I want! And then when my com- puter's off, it's still going to keep working!’ Being able to functionally use that prototype every day is saving a ton of time. Now we're going to have to industrialize this. We're going to have to be able to make it so that IT can take it over, so it can be supported and governed. It follows all of our data standards. Now it’s helping to navigate that large gap between ‘It's working now, so why isn't this ready to go next week,’ which is a really tough hill to climb. The question is, how do you make sure that this is scalable? Pickering: We build structures around the equipment from tubes and connectors. We don't buy things like that because catalog engineering doesn't give you advantage over the competition. Anybody can buy it. So we build ev- erything out of tubes and connectors. And at one time we had to buy this software schedule. We had to learn the software. We just point it to the website. Here's the catalog 30 Oct ober 26, 2026
nesses to reconfigure our processes versus reconfigure our technology. Ochi: Christopher, this June, the Royal Group, which is part of Schwarz Partners, announced a major leap forward in digital print for the corrugating industry with the installa- tion of a BHS Jetliner. I'm wondering if you can share any advice on the information technology aspect of bringing new equipment in, whether it is a digital printer or anything else that's a change, a notable change from what has been in the plant before. Anderson: As with most things, it's about the people and the partnership. Yeah, the Jetliner is really cool. I'm excited to be a part of an organization that is willing to invest and take those kinds of risks. But growing that out, it takes a lot of coordination and partnership. We have our team of engineers who know the systems backwards and forwards, but it also relies on the heavy investment in part- nership with not only BHS but with Amtech. Ochi: We have almost about 100 plants represented in this room a few big technology partners. is there anything you want this group to collectively lean into and maybe even something directly for Amtech? Medof: What an exciting time to be in our industry! Con- sumers have a decided preference for fiber-based pack- aging. Compare and contrast that to 15 years ago. It's really a different story. E-commerce continues to grow, and tech- nology is enabling things that we couldn't have imagined even five years ago. Obviously, there are plenty of risks and downsides that we need to pay attention to. We’re all here today because we're part of the Amtech ecosystem and there's plenty of opportunity around leaning into tech- nology if we put the work in. Amtech has the resources available for those who want to put the work in, who want to leverage technology to become more productive, to do what we all want to do, which is to sell more boxes. And so
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