At Combi Packaging, every delivery of a machine or system has one thing in common: a project manager who knows the process, knows the product and – most important – knows the customer.
“We are the voice of the customer,” says Project Manager Rod Fondriest, a 30-year Combi employee. “We oversee every detail so the order shows up on time and does everything the customer expected.”
The company has three full-time project managers. When a purchase order comes in, one of them is assigned to shepherd it through to completion by following a tightly choreographed and collaborative eight-phase process.
Delivery lead time is an important factor in the sales process. But the clock doesn’t start ticking on the project timeline when the purchase order arrives. The first project management phase is dedicated to assuring a good start by:
It can take as little as a day or two; other times it can take much longer, depending on the complexity of the project and other wrinkles.
“Sometimes we may not be dealing with the right people; the purchase order may come from finance or purchasing, and when we start getting into the details of fulfilling that order we need to orchestrate a shift to engineering and plant management,” Fondriest says.
So the first milestone has specific objectives but it’s also a period for Combi and the customer to get oriented to working together. “It’s our way of confirming that all the right people on both teams are looking at the same picture,” says Fondriest.
The phase ends with the milestone of putting a firm delivery date on the calendar. That’s when the countdown begins. As a rule of thumb, Fondriest says the company aims for a timeline of 18-20 weeks from this milestone to delivery – though it’s shorter for off-the-shelf equipment and well-traveled engineering solutions.
The engineering phase involves both mechanical and electrical engineering. Typically one of the longer phases of a project, it’s when customer-specific requirements are solved. “For a small off-the-shelf machine, engineering might be completed in a day or two, but for large robotic systems it could take weeks,” Fondriest says.
As questions arise in engineering, the project manager is responsible for addressing them with the customer. “We don’t send the engineer to the customer. We want our customer to have one point of contact. Our engineers are specialists at solving problems. Our project managers are specialists at communicating with customers and keeping the project moving forward.”
The “engineering complete” milestone is achieved when mechanical and engineering plans are finished and a bill of materials to build the machines has been released for procurement.
“This is the first of the big hurdles,” Fondriest explains. “Our lead times are based on hitting this point on schedule.”
Assembly is generally the longest phase of a project, and it begins only after 95% of the parts are in-house and ready to go.
Some components are fabricated in-house, while others come from trusted vendors. Frequently used components are kept in inventory for immediate availability. Highly customized equipment may take longer to source or build, but that variable is built into the project timeline from the outset.
The project manager’s role during this phase is to manage lead times and logistics to assure every component is ready when needed. Also, the customer is asked to ship production samples of products and cases that will be used during subsequent phases.
This is the moment the equipment comes to life. With mechanical and electrical assembly complete, wiring is verified, input/output checks are run, the machine is powered on for the first time and software is uploaded.
“It’s a huge phase and a process all by itself,” says Fondriest. “It means we’ve navigated the most time-consuming aspects of the job and we can begin testing.”
Early testing puts the machinery to work with real product and cases. “They start setting up recipes and fine-tuning to get the system set up for speed,” he says.
When the assembly team has the system running as designed, the whole project team – project manager, engineers, applications, sales and assembly – gathers to run the equipment under real conditions. Fondriest describes this IFAT as a dress rehearsal for the customer-facing factory acceptance test.
“We inspect for quality, verify performance at the specified rates and try to catch anything the customer might flag,” he says. “We act like the customer. We open doors, we hit stop buttons, we do everything operators are likely to do. We want to make sure everything runs the way it’s supposed to and that there are no surprises when the customer first sees it in action.”
It’s a short piece of the overall project, typically occupying the better part of a day.
The customer doesn’t get invited to see the equipment at work until it passes internal testing. Combi offers three options for the FAT: In person, online or by video. For a video FAT, the customer will receive a 2-3-minute video of the machinery at work for each product/case combination specified in the purchase order.
When the customer signs off on the FAT, the project moves into its final stages.
Packing up a custom machine is no small feat. While smaller systems might take just a few hours to prep and crate, larger systems can take several days. Before shipment, Combi runs through a final quality check and confirms shipping details with the customer. There’s also a final check to make sure the customer is taking care of preparations from its end to receive and install the equipment. (See related post: What to Expect When the End-of-Line Packaging System Arrives.)
The project manager’s last step is to send the bill of lading – the official notice that the machine has left the building and is on its way. After that, responsibility shifts to the carrier who delivers the equipment, the rigging crew hired by the customer to install it and the Combi service technician who will train operators and fine-tune the machine for heavy use.
The secret sauce in Combi’s project management process isn’t just the well-practiced sequence; it’s the communication.
At every step, the project manager is the single point of contact for the customer. When issues or surprises arise – as they inevitably do – the project manager resolves them. “We’ve seen it all,” Fondriest says. “What matters is that we catch issues early, communicate clearly and keep moving forward.”
Combi’s customers don’t just want machines – they want packaging solutions that arrive on time, perform as promised and don’t disrupt production schedules. “That’s what our process is designed to deliver,” Fondriest says. “It’s all about getting it right the first time. When we hit these milestones, everything else falls into place.”
If you have an end-of-line packaging challenge, contact Combi Packaging Systems to see how we can help fix it.