Paul Harencak,
Vice President, LPS Industries

The pandemic forced businesses to review the entirety of their operations, and every business had a unique response to the effects the outbreak had on commerce. In the case of LPS Industries, we faced threats to our supply chain, distribution channels and to sales and marketing activities. We managed to meet these challenges by taking advantage of technology to communicate in ways we had not done previously.

As an ISO 9001:2015 certified company, we had to keep operating throughout the pandemic. Our core business is flexible packaging, which includes custom laminated roll stock, custom barrier pouches, resealable polyethylene bags and zipper profiles. Those ubiquitous packaging consumers rely on from everyday snacks to those that shelter medical necessities. Many companies also rely on our coated and general packaging products – pressure sensitive envelopes, pressure-sensitive labels needed to ship hazardous material across the country or the world.

In normal times, our business was central to the operations of many other enterprises. With the pandemic, it became clear that shipping services and the products we produce to ship items were essential to our COVID economy. Despite the obvious risks, we could not close. The world needed us to continue. Our new business strategy allowed us to continue functioning.

In late 2019, as the virus was spreading in China, our customers started to ask about reshoring, that is, moving production back to the US from overseas factories. That signalled to us that there was something significant coming that we had to address.

So, in January and February of 2020, we started heavy advertising via e-blasts that we were open and explaining to customers and potential customers that we are a USA based manufacturer of flexible packaging for food and medical devices, as well as industrial bags and envelopes.

We also assessed what the virus outbreak would do to our business. That allowed us to issue a COVID statement toward the end of February 2020 telling our customers that we were open for business and did not have any disruptions to our supply chain, as we were increasing our inventories significantly to cover the beginning upticks in orders.

To ensure that our supply chain was disruption-free, we also were in frequent contact with our critical suppliers to ensure the production and delivery of our orders.

By late March and early April 2020, the virus spread in the US and as cities and states closed businesses. At that time, we made the decision to stay open for production and to begin following stricter COVID guidelines to maintain safe distancing and face coverings as well as temperature checks for all employees. We also stopped sales and promotional travel.

What became very clear as all of this was happening was that communication took on an added importance. We had to communicate our situation and our plans to all our employees, customers, vendors, and suppliers.

Adopting new technologies
If we cannot travel to meet prospects and customers in person if we cannot gather at our sites to hold employee meetings, how do we communicate? We learned that video conferencing is the next best thing to being there. In fact, a great deal of the communications that would have been done in person before could be done in less time with about the same effectiveness via virtual meetings.

While video conferencing is an effective communications tool, it is not the same as being there in person, so that means you need to teach employees how to use this technology. Communications were followed by education, teaching new ways to “talk” to customers, suppliers, and employees. That usually means you must contact the other parties with greater frequency. To get the same message across when you are not there often means you have to send that message a number of times – more e-blasts, more phone calls, more virtual meetings.

Related to that is the need to educate employees on the company’s new structures, procedures, and strategies. We increased management’s involvement in educating employees, and it was genuinely an improvement over our previous approach.

Communications is Key
What did we learn for 2021 and beyond? First and foremost, we learned “Communication and Education are Kings!” Helping remote workers and concerned office and plant workers feel connected and safe is crucial to surviving and thriving in the new normal.

Second, we learned the value of Flexibility! We found value in cross-training as many employees as possible to safeguard production and operations in case of labor shortages due to COVID exposure. This kind of built-in redundancy allows us to change as circumstances change. Adaptability is always important in the free market, but adaptability now is at a premium.

Third, alternatives for supply enhance flexibility. Whether it’s a vendor service or a raw material supplier, keeping operations going is key to getting much-needed COVID packaging out the door. Just as we built in redundancies to personnel with cross-training, we needed to multi-source our necessary supplies.

In short, the best advice I can give is throw away the phrase…” We always did it this way!” Replace it with, “This is the new way to do it!”

Paul Harencak is Vice President at Moonachie, NJ-based, LPS Industries LLC, an ISO 9001:2015 certified, woman-owned flexible packaging manufacturer and supplier of specialized packaging supplies.