Founded in 1959, Colbert Packaging Corp. is a $45 million, independent, privately-held company with customers located throughout the U.S. and parts of Europe that include Abbott Labs, Anderson Packaging, Wrigley Co., Novartis and Blistex. Producing approximately 272 million boxes, 350 million cartons and 15,000 tons of board each year, the company is also environmentally conscientious, recycling 5,000 tons of material annually.

Though Colbert Packaging has built a solid reputation as a manufacturer of the highest quality rigid paper boxes, it realized a few years ago that to remain competitive it needed to branch out from being a traditional carton manufacturer. The company added additional product offerings and today is considered a one-stop-packaging shop that also offers a variety of folding boxes and paperboard specialty products.

As Colbert Packaging's business strategy changed to capitalize on new opportunities, it was clear it needed to update its manufacturing and financial systems to support the new growth and streamline production across its three plants. The company's existing homegrown systems lacked integration and were outdated. Managing inventory was done manually, which was both time-consuming and often led to inaccuracies.

To meet its growing needs, Colbert Packaging selected PECAS Vision from Radius Solutions. PECAS Vision is a leading enterprise solution consisting of integrated manufacturing and financial modules specifically designed for printing and packaging companies. PECAS Vision helps them streamline operations and to respond more rapidly to customer needs. Colbert deployed the solution across its three plants in order to optimize its production process and to support its increasing system requirements.

As a result of deploying PECAS Vision, Colbert now enjoys 99.9 percent inventory accuracy and improved visibility. The company is running a tighter business with reduced costs, improved customer service levels, and it has achieved compliance with tri-weekly audits.

Integration between scheduling, costing and accounting operations has significantly improved the company's ability to estimate projects - facilitating the management of delivery dates and reducing overtime costs. In addition, Colbert has been able to consolidate 80 percent of all its technology using PECAS. The system has proven to be very low maintenance and stable with no history of downtime.

It is important when searching for an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, that companies take into consideration the unique needs of their industry and find a solution that has been designed with those needs in mind.

It is extremely difficult to take a generic ERP system and make it fit the requirements of printing and packaging organizations. Radius Solutions has provided hundreds of printing and packaging companies around the world a leading integrated ERP solution that runs the way they need their businesses to run.

(Reprinted from the January/February 2007 issue, Paperboard Packaging. All Rights Reserved.)

Colbert Packaging's BlisterGuard is a tear-resistant, theft-proof package. The target market is clamshell products that are common in all the big box retailers.

All items in a customer forecast can be uploaded or imported into the converter's Enterprise Resource Planning system. A fully featured ERP system can process all the items on that forecast and generate a recommendation for production.