What Sets Your Company Apart?

When asked ‘what sets your company apart?’, how do you answer that question? In our case it is a very simple question to answer. Our company is unique in that we don’t just sell products someone else engineered, we sell products that we engineered ourselves. This allows us to make improvements and upgrades to the machines as technology evolves. We are not stifled by having to sell what someone else designed. We can design and re-design our own products, and we do!

Packaging machinery is a rather large industry. There are hundreds of thousands of different types of machines used every day on packaging production lines. However, there are only about a thousand companies that actually design, engineer and build the machines. There are tens of thousands of resellers and distributors as well as companies that assemble the pre-made machine parts, but not that many actually doing what we do.

Being able to make changes to our designs is what allows us to help our customers with specific challenges. It also has allowed us to refine our designs to make them the best in the industry. Our customers asked for versatile bottle unscramblers, and we delivered with numerous models that offer the most versatility in bottle unscrambling. They asked for simple bottle capper designs and we delivered with the widest range of container closing machinery of any company in the world. What sets New England Machinery, Inc. apart from the rest – we design, engineer, manufacture, fabricate, build, tune and test every machine that leaves our plant from a concept in someone’s mind to a finished machine ready for production performance.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.

Spare Parts and Change Parts – Don’t Skimp To Save Money

We have occasionally discovered that our customers will stop purchasing spare parts because they have found another source that saves them money. In the long run, however, the cheaper parts wind up costing them more money. The parts don’t last as long and/or can cause damage and additional wear and tear on the machinery if they are not made to the correct specifications. You may have heard the expression ‘A penny saved is a penny earned’, well in this case ‘a penny saved is a dollar spent on repair and maintenance.’

We did an experiment at our house with ‘no name’ cheap batteries vs a battery with a well known name and reputation. We put the cheaper batteries in an appliance we use on a timer every day and noted the date they were put in. When they died, we noted how long they lasted, then replaced them with the better batteries and noted the dates again. We discovered that the money we saved on purchasing the cheaper batteries was wasted. We had to replace them twice as fast, thus actually spending more money.

It is the same with machinery spare parts and change parts. When buying them for your company’s machinery, buy only ‘genuine’ spare parts made by the original machinery manufacturer. It will be money well spent.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.

Word of Mouth Advertising – It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than That.

All very successful companies have one important thing in common – word of mouth advertising helped get them there. I have often tried a product based solely on someone’s verbal recommendation. If I have delayed trying it, but then hear from a second or third person about how good the product is, then I go out of my way to find it and try it. You can’t pay enough money to get this kind of advertising.

If you don’t know whether you have customers who are ‘championing’ your product, here are a few suggestions on how to find out.
1. Send out a survey to your existing customers. Ask them what they like and don’t like about your company and its products.
2. Have your sales team ask every customer they talk to if they can and/or will recommend your company/products.
3. Ask new customers who referred them to your company.

Once you know who likes you and why, ask them if you can quote them on your website and/or other marketing literature. Ask them if you can use them as a reference to potential new customers. A new potential customer is more likely to buy from you if they can speak with someone who is already using your product and is happy with it. The value of a happy customer willing to share their experience is beyond compare.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.

Why A Compact Unscrambler Part II

Below is the second half of an article I wrote several years ago.

Surprisingly, a little research shows that the purchasers of compact style unscramblers have their own different reasons for choosing this model.

Paul Calabretta is the Sales Engineer for Dairy Conveyor Corporation located in Huntington Beach, California. Dairy Conveyor specializes in assisting dairies in finding the right packaging solutions for their exclusive production applications. Most of their customer’s plants are located in Mexico. Paul believes that the dairy industry has unique production problems due to the evolution of the industry itself. According to Paul, “Most dairies have less space due to the way the industry evolved. These facilities started out in a small room, with one filler, filling 10 gallons per minute. When they wanted to increase their production, they had to make do with what space was available. Also, due to the limited shelf life of their products and to make distribution faster and easier, many of these dairies began in urban areas. As their business grew, so did their neighborhood. Suddenly they found themselves “land locked” with no possible room to expand.”

Paul also speculated on his theory as to the disparity in economics for the dairy industry, “A company will purchase a compact unscrambler due to its small footprint. Real estate is expensive. The economics of the dairy industry are so different than other beverages. In dairy, the cost of the raw product is much more expensive. Other beverages produce a higher gross profit compared to dairy.”

The distillery industry found other reasons to add a compact unscrambler to their production line. Buffalo Trace Distillery is located in Frankfort, KY. Their Production Manager, Richard Kerr shared his thoughts on the benefits of a compact. “The future of the distillery industry is moving more to PET containers. Bottling plants need to be prepared to meet these changes with the best machinery for these new containers. We used to have two separate machines to unscramble and clean our glass bottles. We now have a compact unscrambler that is capable of handling an abundance of bottles. It has an ionized air cleaner integrated into the machine. This accomplishes two tasks at once, and saves us the space of a second machine.”

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.

Why A Compact Unscrambler Part I

I wrote the following article quite a few years ago, but the information is still valid today:

In early fall of 2000 I was invited to attend a Focus Group sponsored by the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI). The purpose of the meeting was to research how the packaging machinery industry had changed and was changing. Its most specific goal was to determine how PMMI could better serve its members. During the course of the three-hour meeting all of the participants were asked to define what they felt or believed their customers wanted in packaging machinery. The group unanimously agreed that their customers were looking for better, faster, and cheaper (less expensive) packaging machinery. Defining faster and cheaper was fairly simple, but defining what each customer thought was “better” was quite elusive to the group. As the discussion lengthened on the subject, everyone had varying ideas on what constituted “better”. There was, however, one idea that somewhat integrated the terms better and cheaper (less expensive). That idea was – smaller. If the packaging machinery were smaller, and saved valuable floor space in a plant, then that would definitely be “better”. It would be less expensive for the company because floor space costs money and the company would save money by utilizing less space to accomplish the same tasks. The problem then arises as to how to achieve faster and smaller.

For unscrambling, the answer is a compact unscrambler. Necessity has caused the development of the most cost effective, smallest layout space solution available, for plastic bottle unscrambling called the Compact Unscrambler. These plastic bottle unscramblers offer the smallest footprint in the entire packaging industry. This design was pioneered because of the increased value of real estate on production floors and the lack of available floor space. As the demand grew for companies to produce more and more products at higher volumes with the same plant they have had all along, the need was developed for more compact packaging solutions. Hence, the design and introduction of this revolutionary, one-of-a-kind concept, incorporating two machines into the space of one was developed. The standard, widely used and highly accepted plastic bottle unscrambler was taken and integrated into it is a uniquely designed internal hopper/elevator placed within the unscrambler’s unused airspace.

When comparing the footprint to those unscramblers already in use in today's facilities, it becomes clearly evident the amount of valuable real estate that can be saved by using a Compact Unscrambler. The compact unscramblers are now offered in sizes that start with a 36” “mini” and range up to 72", easily handling containers from small pharmaceutical bottles to large beverage and industrial bottles.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.

Are You 5 S Compliant?

We had a meeting recently about implementing 5S throughout our company. At first I was not enthused. It just sounded like more work to add to my long list of tasks. We watched a webinar that was a little too repetitive and not really inspiring. But with no choice I began planning. What I didn’t expect, was that as I looked around my office and started seeing some of the useless stuff I had accumulated over the years, I realized that this was a chance to ‘start all over’ and do it right.

We determined as a company that we could not afford to put all work on hold for an entire day to get everything cleaned up, sorted, scrubbed and set up. So I planned out how I would spend 1 hour every day for two weeks working on a different area of my office. The time schedule left me extra days in case an emergency interrupted my schedule. It felt really cathartic and liberating to allow yourself to throw away items you previously believed you might one day need. If you haven’t used it in 5 years, that day is unlikely to ever come.

The real beauty of 5S, though, is to be able to find everything you need right away, because you are now organized. The items you use every day are right at hand and the items you use once a week are close by. Everything else you need is stored nearby without looking messy and is easily and quickly retrieved. And the useless clutter that you don’t need or use, is gone.

If you have not implemented 5S at your place of work I recommend you take the time to do so. The time you save looking for items alone way surpasses the time spent on the implementation.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.

Innovation – Where Does It Come From

It is easy to become complacent and forget to innovate. We tend to look at solutions to problems that are common to us instead of redefining the problem and/or the solution. A great example of re-defining the solution is the invention of ‘Pringles’ potato chips. A group of college students were asked to come up with a better way to package potato chips. Instead of re-designing the package, they re-designed the product inside the package. The next time you are challenged with a problem at work, don’t think ‘this is impossible’, instead think, ‘what can I change in the equation that will make the solution easier to accomplish’. A stop sign does not have to be octagonal and red, but it does need to catch the attention of the viewer and make them stop. What other visual items would result in the same effect? Does the audience determine the reaction to the visual item? Ask these and a lot of other questions before determining the course of action you will take in solving your next problem. Make innovation a habit as opposed to an exception. The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.