94 Business View - December 2014
“We’ve got to be competitively priced and we’d better
have good quality, but where we can differentiate our-
selves is how quickly we can do things,” Lobis said.
“It’s a problem spot, especially for some of the larger
integrated companies. Where we have an advantage
is that it takes them a long time to do things. And some
of the smaller competitors we have don’t have the re-
sources that we do. It does require a company that’s
got a strong financial position – that has cash and is
sitting well with the mills – to be able to have enough
of a paper roll inventory to service as quickly as we
do.”
To that end, the company installed both a printing
press and a die-cutter in 2014, and Lobis said the
printing press in particular has
helped trim set-up times to less
than 20 minutes, which has pro-
vided a huge productivity gain and
a boost in capacity. The progression
of digital printing toward smaller customers in the mar-
ket is being tracked as well, with the idea that it could
ultimately become a far bigger factor in Rose City’s
day-to-day business.
Lean manufacturing initiatives have yielded significant
improvements at both the Vancouver and Gresham
plants since they were implemented in earnest eight
years ago. All financial information is shared with em-
ployees to get them up to speed on the importance of
each individual element of the operation, which cre-
ates a proactive mindset to make constant improve-
ments in processes.
Once that environment has been created, Lobis said,
MANUFACTURING
