Enriching Lives with Packaging Solutions and Services
Anyone working in the packaging industry knows that there are often challenging projects. At Douglas, our employee owners take pride in working through challenges that arise to ensure our customers are happy and successful.
In October 2017, a popular craft brewer purchased its first Douglas machine. The machine was a hand load variety pack infeed on our VantraTM platform. Since the purchase of this first machine, this valuable customer has purchased six additional pieces of equipment to meet their production needs. After the install and start-up of the first machine, market demand continued to be strong for the variety pack product. In order to further automate their lines, the craft brewer purchased a PrismaTM Variety Pack System with Automatic Unloader solution which fed a Spectrum® Multipacker. The successful completion of this project in March of 2019 proved to be very significant, resulting in the purchase of a second line to do the same.
Douglas was challenged on the first Vantra project to meet our customer’s target speeds, resulting in delayed shipment and negotiation on speed requirements. There were also issues with changeovers on the first split pitch Spectrum. Through these challenges, Douglas team members displayed Servant’s Heart and Ownership Spirit values which resulted in a strengthening of the customer-supplier relationship.
Due to the changeover challenges, the customer required multiple changeovers to be tested to ensure performance. To our customer’s delight, the team performed the changeovers flawlessly.
After the check-out, the Douglas Project Manager sent the following e-mail to the team:
I wanted to pass along my sincere thanks to the team that worked on this project. This valued customer has been a great partner in the beverage packaging business the past few years. Due to their experience with changeover on the Split Pitch Spectrum, they had reservations about another Spectrum for this set of unloaders as they don’t change their current variety pack line over.
During the testing, we changed the machine over nine times without issue. To say the least, our customer was very impressed and appreciative of the support displayed during this trip. When we discuss enriching lives with packaging solutions and services, this equipment delivers on that promise.
In 6 months, this craft brewer has run 5.6 million cases (11.2 million cartons) through our equipment which in turn is saving them the additional cost of packaging outside of their brewery.
Thanks again!
At Douglas, it’s not just what we do. It’s who we are. We would be proud to partner with you. Contact us for all of your secondary packaging needs at 320.763.6587.