Six Weeks to Market

Transcript (Download)

CCA was recently presented with an outstanding new business opportunity.

The Calgon Consumer Products Corporation had decided to rush into national distribution with their new cling -free foam sheet fabric softening product.

Their problem was to produce and package this brand new product for national distribution within six weeks.

CCA responded to the challenge in dynamic fashion.

The involvement was broad and deep and included three sales agents, namely Chuck Davis at Solon, Paul Kreeters at Fort Wayne, and then finally us here at Valley Forge.

What they wanted us to do specifically was to develop a package and also to come up with a packaging line, put it in one of our facilities, and custom pack their product for them for its initial market testing.

At that time, we call a task force meeting at Valley Forge in order to study what had to be done.

And determine how we would solve the Calgon's packaging need.

While the Calgon project had its special measure of challenge, it was not a unique situation.

Container Corporation has offered custom packaging services to our customers for some eight years.

In special facilities at Fort Wayne and Santa Clara, as well as Valley Forge, we have the capability to supply custom packaging for both simple and complex programs.

Naturally enough, the complexities of the Calgon program involve numerous staff departments and service groups at Valley Forge, as well as the main office groups of legal and insurance consultation in Chicago.

Due to the unusual characteristics of the product, a foam material that is extremely light that wants to drag and buckle when pushed into a carton.

Also, the three sizes presented us with a concern for automatic loading at high speeds.

From a manufacturing point of view, the inception of the Calgon project provided several interesting challenges.

Due to our late entrance into the program, the planning and coordination of many activities had to be accomplished and efficiently executed in order to meet the initial and continuing delivery requirements of the customer.

Key activities included the searching out of specialized automated equipment that could fully meet the specific packaging needs, the rebuilding of existing on -hand equipment, and the necessary delivery and installation timetables.

Similarly, the screening, hiring, and training of an additional 75 -person workforce for this particular project was required.

And finally, the startup of the operation, incorporating the inevitable changes to accommodate the expanding scope of the project.

All of this was accomplished with the needs of the customer being completely met within the marketing timetable constraints.

My responsibility as the project engineer on the Calgon contract packaging job, with approximately five weeks from the start of our order until we had to start in the production, was my responsibility to finalize the layout of these production lines, determine what equipment would be necessary, procure this equipment, and supervise the installation.

Every minute of this time was important to accomplish what we had as our goal in a relatively short period of time.

There were, of course, several concerns, not the least of which is the product.

The nature of the foam is that it is extremely soft, somewhat tacky, has a high coefficient of friction, can be unstable if there is any significant amount of drag encountered as it is moved from one position to another.

This, of course, meant that in our automated cartoning operation, special attention had to be given to the design of the product buckets, the transfer buckets, and the pusher faces in order to ensure that friction was minimized as much as possible.

And that stack integrity could be maintained.

With the commitments for mass distribution in a short period of time, we felt a backup system was most important.

The structure was then designed so that some blanks would be used as a tube or a tray.

This enabled us to top load the large 36 count package and also the 24s and 12 counts as a backup for the automatic line if required.

Packaging line number two was set up on this premise to form top opening cartons for conveying to people on the line who would manually insert the product, close the cartons, and replace them on the conveyor for final sealing and case packing.

This gave us the flexibility not only to handle some of the smaller volume items in separate runs, but provided insurance to cover possible failure of our concept for automatically inserting this unusual product.

If that had happened, additional handpack lines could have been set up to complete the program.

Fortunately, our pre -testing and experimental work paid off by accurately predicting the success of automatically loading this product on our high -speed packaging line.

We can all take a great deal of pride in what we were able to accomplish and point out again that this indeed is custom packaging, customized to do a very specific job, and in this instance also to provide a pilot line operation, which has been adopted by the customer for use in his own plant operation.

Calgon top management personnel have readily admitted to us that without CCA's assistance on this project, they could not have achieved that goal.

The important lesson of the Calgon success story is that custom packaging is a valuable extra dimension of CCA packaging service.

Moreover, it is a service that we offer on an established, ongoing basis through all of our manufacturing divisions.

And most importantly, CCA custom packaging can draw on any degree of cooperation from the comprehensive staff organizations which serve these divisions and their customers.

That's what we mean by CCA custom packaging service.

Identifier

F.2010-02-0164

Date Of Production

circa 1975

Abstract

Short industrial film describing Container Corporation of America's custom packaging service. CCA's work with Calgon Consumer Products Corporation's Cling Free Fabric Softener Sheets is shown as a case study.

Description

The film begins with a shot of Paul Donohie talking on the phone in an office. A voiceover explains that Container Corporation of America had been tasked with developing, producing, and packing custom cartons for Calgon Consumer Products Corporation's new fabric softener sheets in only six weeks. The film shows several CCA employees holding a task force meeting at CCA's Valley Forge, PA offices. The voiceover describes that due to the unusual nature of the Calgon product — a light foam material that wants to drag and buckle when pushed into a carton, and which comes in three different sizes — CCA would need to use specialized equipment and training to complete the job. Scenes of CCA's factory production lines are paired with an interview with project engineer Bill Kuehn, who discusses the special attention the product required due to its high coefficient of friction. He describes that CCA's pre-testing and experimental work paid off by accurately predicting the success of automatically loading this product in CCA’s high-speed packaging line.

The film's narrator concludes that "the important lesson of the Calgon success story is that custom packaging is a valuable extra dimension of CCA packaging service. It is a service that we offer on an established, ongoing basis through all of our manufacturing divisions. And most importantly, CCA custom packaging can draw on any degree of cooperation from the comprehensive staff organizations which serve these divisions and their customers.”

Run Time

0:09:23

Format

16mm

Extent

375 feet

Color

Color

Sound

Optical

Reel/Tape Number

1/1

Has Been Digitized?

Yes

Language Of Materials

English

Element

Print

Genre

Industrial

Form

Short

Subject

Containers
Packaging
Industry
Industrial design
Consumer goods
Processes and techniques
Factories
Business people
Office workers

Related Collections

Rhodes Patterson Collection

Related Places

North America ➜ United States ➜ Pennsylvania ➜ Valley Forge

Sponsor/client

Container Corporation of America

Main Credits

Patterson, Rhodes (is filmmaker)

Participants And Performers

Donohie, Paul (is participant)

Davis, Chuck (is participant)

Desmond, Jack (is participant)

Fanelle, Don (is participant)

Kuehn, Bill (is participant)

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