Paper Machinery Corporation Sees Long Term Benefits From Shop-Trak™ and Doc-Trak™

Any business knows how rewarding it is to receive positive feedback from customers. Here at The Lake Companies, we believe strongly in our products because they’ve proven to help our customers succeed. Our premium SyteLine enhancement solutions like Shop-Trak, Doc-Trak, Fact-Trak, and Beacon-Trak have helped our customers lower costs, increase production, improve efficiency, and boost the bottom line of their businesses. Tom Schmitz of Paper Machinery Corporation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was eager to share his story of how The Lake Companies’ products helped them achieve success.

Paper Machinery Corporation is a 100% employee-owned company and is the world’s leading source of high performance forming machines for paper cups, paperboard canisters, and custom paperboard packages. They design and manufacture machines and tooling for converters who form hot and cold drink cups for the beverage, fast food, and vending industries. The converters provide cups to many major fast food chains, including McDonald’s® and Hardee’s®.

Tom Schmitz is the Materials/Demand Planning Manager and is responsible for establishing the company’s production schedules to support machine and tooling customer orders, along with service demands. Inventory and warehousing is also part of his responsibilities within their supply chain. He is also highly involved with the SyteLine software in the company to support the Manufacturing, Engineering, and Customer Service departments.

Paper Machinery Corporation implemented Shop-Trak over twenty years ago and added Doc-Trak four years ago, and Schmitz was kind enough to share their story.

Before Shop-Trak and Doc-Trak

Schmitz said that before Shop-Trak was deployed at Paper Machinery Corporation, old time clocks were used on the shop floor and the engineering project hours were manually recorded. Furthermore, prior to using the Shop-Trak Kanban feature, hand lists were used by the warehouse personnel and they had to walk to the purchasing department for entry and ordering.

We needed to improve timely data required to make daily and routine business decisions, Schmitz said. We also needed to improve our product costing accuracy.

Paper Machinery was in need of a solution that would allow them to eliminate the manual processes associated with ordering 3,500 floor stock items and they wanted a way to access documents that would be fast and easy for all employees. They found the answer in implementing The Lake Companies’ Shop-Trak and Doc-Trak.

Benefits and Outcomes of Implementing Shop-Trak and Doc-Trak

Paper Machinery saw several significant improvements with Shop-Trak and Doc-Trak. According to Schmitz:

• Shop floor time clocks were eliminated with Shop-Trak
• The Shop-Trak Visual Dispatch Report helped to control machine center loads
• Product costing accuracy and open job status improved with timely posted transactions
• Both Shop-Trak and Doc-Trak allowed the business to grow, while maintaining head count and improved accuracy by many functions supported by these tools
• After using the Shop-Trak Kanban feature to create POs to replenish floor stock items, Paper Machinery was able to cut the entire process down by approximately 10-15% per week. This change improved recording accuracy and reduced the time involved between warehouse and buyer

When looking for a software solution, Schmitz said Paper Machinery was ultimately looking for a solution to help automate processes and improve communication in the company.

PMC purchased the Shop-Trak software to initially improve labor reporting on the manufacturing floor and capture engineering projects time and cost. Very quickly we started using it to collect hours for payroll.

Their use of the software didn’t end there.

Aside from these tools helping us improve how we collect and control data to run the business, these tools helped us identify poor disciplines and drive change. Many of these are intangible but over time make a difference (i.e. cost, attendance, etc.)

Shop-Trak and Doc-Trak also allowed Paper Machinery to automate electronic records, send POs electronically to suppliers via the software, and they have future plans to implement additional functionality.

The Lake Companies is here to Help You

Our greatest reward is when our customers are successful as a direct result of implementing our technology solutions. Through the years, we have helped hundreds of companies around the world improve efficiency, lower costs, improve production, eliminate repetitive and tedious tasks, lower their environmental footprints, and make their organization a better place for employees to work. We would really love to help your company as well. To find out more we strongly encourage you to contact us today.