A story of End-of-Line packaging machine builders with a personal touch...

It was about 2 'o clock in the afternoon when the phone rang on the Sales department of Lantech.com in the Netherlands. A bakery had found our contact details on the website - www.Lantech.com and called with a question; 'Can you manufacture a packaging machine for our biscuits?' At this point the heart of the Lantech employee starts beating harder, these are the projects Lantech loves! To understand the customer and his needs the Lantech sales person started collecting information about the bakery, its products and packaging processes. Together with an Engineer the project details are discussed. Reusing the knowledge gathered over other projects two alternative packaging principles were developed.

To understand the customers' processes in all details the sales person visited the customer site where he collected all the packaging details and shared the knowledge and ideas for this project. Together with the project team of the bakery a packaging solution was created where we combined a robust packaging principle in a compact frame. With the automatic erecting of the cases the design of the case could be changed which resulted in a more cost effective case. With this solution the customer would save labour and material costs and in return would benefit from an improved packaging process. Due to the short Return on Investment the customer signed the order for the project.

After the enthusiastic receipt of the order Lantech formed a project team to handle this challenging project with a short lead time. During the Holiday Season the Engineering department managed to do the engineering of the machine. With this helping our supply network with some additional time for manufacturing the parts. Now it is up to the production team on the floor to build this customer specific machine! During assembly a team of 5 people, with the support of a project coordinator and Engineering, were able to build the machine in less than 3 weeks! The customer was updated about the details of the machine and the progress when a mile stone was achieved or when we or he had a question. It happened that the team worked until late in the evening to achieve the milestones they had set themselves, this is our passion!

After a test program executed with the products of the customer the machine was ready. To ensure the machine was meeting the customer expectations, the customer was invited for the Factory Acceptance Test. Before the order of the machine was agreed the Sales person has put together with the customer the FAT protocol, to assure that the machine was build and demonstrated in line with the customer expectations.

The evening before the FAT we met the Project Manager, the Buyer and the Project Engineer of the customer in the small village of Cuijk and had a pleasant evening in one of the excellent restaurants in the city centre. The next morning we welcomed the customer in our house and where able to present the result of almost 3 months of team work. During the day we went through all the details of the project, explained how the machines functions and checked if we have met all the customers' specifications. Especially we focus on the robustness of the solution, required capacity and the safety aspects. At the end of the FAT we put together the FAT report which all parties signed. With 2 remarks in the report, which Lantech promised to correct the other day, the customer was delighted with the end-result.

Of course there always are some minor niggles, due to the complexity of the machine, combined with the timeframe; we had to turn around the pickup-head so the biscuits were positioned the opposite way into the box! This is a one example of why we believe a FAT is necessary, obviously engineering fixed the problem right away before the machine left!

In the words of the customer:

 'Thanks for the great care, but above all that you guys understood my packaging problem and by working together we have come to this solution, many thanks'.

Lantech as a company is happy that the bakery was so satisfied with the result. With the positive FAT still in our minds we started to make the machine ready for shipment to the customers' site. Handling a machine with a length of 6 meters is work for experts! This is a nice job for our shipping department. With over 35 years experience in transport and distribution we have all knowledge in house to prepare our machines for safe transport to our customers. When the machine arrived on site the Lantech service technician and our local partner where already present to supervise the unloading of the machine. The next few days the machine was installed and integrated in the bakery and packaging process. During the installation of the machine the training of the technicians and operators of the customer was incorporated to assure the machine will perform as demonstrated during the FAT.

The local partner was made familiar with the specific details of this machine to ensure he can support the machine after the Site Acceptance Test. Lantech believes in life cycle support. With almost 40 Lantech trained service technicians in Europe we support our customers in their objectives to improve the performance of their packaging lines.

What is the story behind Lantech?

With more than 35-years of technical experience with designing, engineering and building machines we have learned a lot from customers, machines difficulties and market challenges during these years. Our passion is to build machines, smartly integrated in your packaging process. We support this by our world-wide network of trained field technicians and a customer orientated sales department. We also believe that customer life-time service is essential to keep the machines operating as wanted to support your packaging process. Because of the wide range of technical and mechanical knowledge of our service department, our field people can give you the best advice in creating the best service solution for your maintenance and packaging process.

We see that there is an ever growing demand from our customers to build packaging machines which solve specific packaging problems for the customer. We believe that this is what working in the packaging business is all about, understand the customers packaging problem and together deliver a customer based solution!

Visit Lantech during the Interpack in Düsseldorf, Germany from the 12^th until the 18^th of May 2011!

We are demonstration our End-of-Line solutions on stand 13 D47/E48