Sr Managers: Boehmer Boxes' President Mark Caines provided an overview of the business and demonstrated their custom made in-house intranet portal database containing all key depts. and their linked performance indicators that is used as a strategic business management tool. Tour and roundtable discussions touched on the following themes for the 20+ Sr Managers in attendance:

• Culture Change Strategies
• Employee Incentives
• Creating Pull- Inventory Reduction
• Communication Strategies
• Managing Value Stream for Customer
• Environmental Management
• H&S Strategies from Sr Management

This was a dynamic forum for the exchange of knowledge across manufacturing sectors at a senior level. Many thanks to Mark Caines and all of the Sr Managers in attendance!

Continuous Improvement: 25 Continuous Improvement professionals from 21 different manufacturing facilities brought to bear their insight to help with Boehmer Box's CI Problem for the Group:

"Orchestrating Pull within constraints of Workflow, Product Variability, and Customer Requirements"

The context of the problem:

 Boehmer box is a folding carton solution provider for Retailers and Co-packers Food Industry (cereal and meats boxes, pasta boxes, etc.)

• Total service provider for prepress, inventory control and manufacturing
• Boehmer Box manufactures to a warehouse approximately the same size as the plant and customers pull from that warehouse
• They are tied to what is ordered... if a customer orders 500,000 they expect to see 500,000 in the warehouse even though they may not pull for 8 months
• 95% of customer release ship from our warehouse
• Price reduction for quantity ordered
• Warehouse terms are 3 to 12 months

 Since creating "pull" between processes is a common challenge for all manufacturers, members came prepared to benchmark their own strategies and logic for creating pull with each other within the context of helping the host with this problem.

After a review of Lean Principles, members broke out into brainstorming groups, and reported suggestions back to the host. For details of the report back to the host, please contact Mike Baker at EMC.

Health & Safety:  Boehmer Box is currently celebrating 2 years of no lost time accidents. Joe Brick and the Boehmer H&S team provided a presentation on their H&S initiatives and reasons for their success. One highlight is their "ticketing" program whereby employees can write up mock fines for minor infractions to enforce the message of safety. This program includes the company president, who has received a few "fines" himself!

This presentation was also followed by an overview of Boehmer's aggressive ergonomic program. Both of these presentations are available on the EMC K-W Consortium page.

Human Resources: Pandemic Planning was the topic for this month. Chris Harold from the Waterloo Region Health Unit and Bill Hughes from Sunguard Availability Services both provided very detailed and informative overview of what to consider when developing a pandemic plan, and local resources available. Chris and Bill's presentations and contact information will be posted on the EMC K-W/Cambridge consortium page.

For any further information on these or other manufacturing networking events in the Waterloo Region, please contact Mike Baker at EMC: mbaker@emccanada.org