Excellence Is a Moving Target

Most companies strive to achieve excellence. We all want to be ‘first in class’. To be successful, we cannot settle for mediocrity. But excellence is not a static goal. It is not a ‘place’ that once reached, is fully conquered. In recent years the problems of Toyota have shown us that excellence is a continual state of high performance, that cannot be taken for granted or even momentarily overlooked. I’m sure you can all think of items that were truly ‘excellent’ but are no longer being made. Some things that come to my mind include the IBM Selectric typewriter, a General Electric transistor radio, and Motorola’s Cabinet Stereo System. The interesting thing about my selections is that these companies are all still in business because they continued to innovate and improve their products.

To truly achieve and sustain excellence, a company needs to constantly find ways to improve its products while listening to the needs of their customers and carefully monitoring industry trends. I’m very proud to work for a company that does just that. While our company already makes the best unscramblers and cappers in the packaging industry, they do not rely on existing technology to carry the company forward. They just recently introduced new electrical features that allow one touch speed adjustment and online recipe creation via the HMI on all bottle unscramblers and capping equipment. This wasn’t done in response to ‘keeping up’ with the industry, it was done in an effort to lead it. Continual improvement – the key ingredient to excellence.

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 http://www.neminc.com/.