TC Transcontinental gains complete control over its flexible packaging operations

Flexible packaging converter TC Transcontinental Packaging has built its reputation on three cornerstones: food safety, consistent quality and outstanding customer service.

Part of the company’s commitment to service is based on its short-run capabilities, quick turnaround and flexible scheduling. With new equipment and a dedicated and knowledgeable workforce, the converting operation – a growth-driven division of print and publishing giant TC Transcontinental – delivers quality flexible printing and laminating solutions using 10-color flexographic printing plus industry-leading food safety systems supported by stringent process controls and traceability.

When TC Transcontinental established its packaging division with the purchase of Clinton, Mo.-based Capri Packaging in 2014, company executives recognized that an upgrade of its existing management information system (MIS) was in order to be able to profitably grow its packaging business. The facility had used ePS PSI software, but would now require an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that would be compatible with TC Transcontinental’s corporate ERP and PeopleSoft financial software platforms.

Jason Schmedding, team advisor of the division’s scheduling group, notes that switching to a new ERP could not create any process changes that would jeopardize the company’s Safe Quality Food 3 (SQF3) certification. “Our facilities are SQF3 certified, which is critical for our customers,” notes Schmedding. “To maintain that, we have to keep up with FDA regulations for supply-chain inventory control. So that was an absolute requirement for all the ERP systems we looked at.”

The Suite’s certified cross-component integrations are allowing TC Transcontinental to seamlessly pass all necessary job information between its Radius ERP and PrintFlow scheduling components. This out-of-the-box integration ensures that information, requirements and changes are communicated accurately and immediately to the relevant people and workflow components that need it.

The PrintFlow component optimizes the sequencing of jobs and synchronizes production as it considers the thousands of constraints that affect every step of every job. This holistic, rules-based approach to scheduling, based on the Theory of Global Optimization, allows TC Transcontinental to handle more work in the most profitable way possible.

And, the Enterprise Packaging Suite as a whole gives TC Transcontinental a way to collect, organize and present information on every transaction in a usable format. Consolidating business and operational information into one centralized system helps streamline processes, improve resource management, reduce waste and boost productivity while enabling a more proactive management approach at the Clinton facilities.

Results

With the new Suite workflow, TC Transcontinental has been able to enhance its competitive advantages. Because the software technologies gave TC Transcontinental new capabilities to collect and integrate company-wide information, executives in Clinton immediately saw a number of benefits. For example, according to Schmedding, “Now we can manage inventory control. Before, when we used PSI, we had to have a separate system for inventory control.”

The change has improved both scheduling and manufacturing, because TC Transcontinental Packaging managers now have full visibility on availability of raw materials. Using bar codes and scanning at each step of the process, the new workflow platform also eliminates downtime that TC Transcontinental used to experience because materials were not on the floor. It also saves time by eliminating checking stock manually. Since the plants do so many jobs in a day, each manual touchpoint used to add incrementally to the lead time for the day’s jobs.

James Aziz, TC Transcontinental’s Senior Vice President, Finance and Manufacturing Efficiency for Print and Packaging, says, “We went live with both PeopleSoft and ePS’s Suite at the same time. Despite this enormous challenge, we closed our month-end on time and were able to analyze our month’s results thanks to the support from ePS. We obtained several inventory evaluation reports from the ePS system which reassured us that the numbers were accurate.”

Next Steps

When asked about industry trends, Aziz says, “Private labels want to have the right kind of product on the shelf at the right time to maximize sales. They don’t want to order large quantities in case it doesn’t sell. The expansion of brands and reluctance of customers to invest in working capital has been going on for a number of years, and we think it will continue. So, while they used to have five or six in a family, they now have many more. This maximizes impact and allows companies to customize products for the region.” The ePS Enterprise Packaging Suite implementation has helped TC Transcontinental manage a trend where private label brands are introducing more products to help them differentiate themselves and meet specific customer brand preferences.

And, as the company strives to meet important trends, it has also significantly expanded its flexible packaging footprint. A few months after going live with its new ERP workflow at Capri Packaging, Transcontinental Inc. acquired Ultra Flex Packaging Corp., a supplier of flexible packaging in Brooklyn, N.Y., a move that roughly doubles the size of the TC Transcontinental Packaging division. As the division grows, the Suite’s modular architecture, with multi-language and multi-currency capabilities, will scale with them, allowing sustained growth without the threat of individual software programs holding them back.