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Corporate Maintenance – Automating from Scratch

Kamps Pallets looks a little bit different than 11 years ago when Frank Swartz started in maintenance at the Grand Rapids, Michigan plant.

Kamps has grown significantly in both geographical span and number of employees since Frank started in maintenance. With that growth has come a need for increased automation in our plants and facilities.

In his first years here, Frank was tasked with fixing forklifts, maintaining semi-trucks and other facility maintenance. A decade later, Kamps is keeping Frank busy executing a vision towards increased automation in all the plants across the country. Simply put, when Kamps needs something to increase efficiency in our operations process, Frank and other members of corporate maintenance set out to build it.

One thing that hasn’t changed in the eleven years that Frank has worked for Kamps is the importance of striving for excellence. The corporate maintenance team exhibits this in their endless effort to solve problems, big and small, for their fellow employees.

During our conversation, Frank casually mentions building a chain fed trim saw from scratch and pulls out pictures of the machine stylishly painted in Kamps colors that now sits in the Grand Rapids plant. This is the kind of humble ingenuity we see daily here from the corporate maintenance team.

But it is no surprise that Frank has been able to create as needs arise here at Kamps. Growing up on a blueberry farm meant there were plenty of opportunities for Frank to learn about equipment and how to fix it. It also means that Frank now has a hatred for anything blueberry.

Here at Kamps we recognize the creativity and dedication it takes to keep up with a growing company. Keep up the good work, Frank!

Do you love meetings? No, of course not. Most people dread meetings and prefer to have fewer or no meetings because when you are in meetings, you are usually not being productive. We can go into why businesses spend so much time in unproductive meetings, but it’s not going to help your business to understand why. Instead, we’ll focus on how to make meetings more productive.

Here are some ideas for making meetings more productive:

• Have a clear focus – Make meetings focus on a few key things such as current work priorities, what issues are creating problems, and what needs to be resolved. The bottleneck issues can become action items. A short meeting of this type, daily or weekly, can keep things on track.
• Don’t forget an agenda – This seems obvious; you’re having a meeting! What’s the agenda? What are we going to talk about? The fact is most meetings have no agenda, and if your company has meetings with no agenda, you are wasting time and money.
• Appoint a leader and time tracker – Someone should be leading the meeting and someone, perhaps the same person, should be keeping time. But regardless of who does it, someone should be in charge of making sure each meeting stays on track.
• Avoid trying to solve every problem on the spot – Don’t try to completely solve all problems in the meeting itself. Instead use the meeting to understand and clarify issues. Once you understand a problem that needs to be solved, you can assign the people and resources and track the outcomes in future meetings.
• Include the right people – Make sure that you have the right number of people and the right people in your meetings. Be careful that you don’t fill up the room with a lot of people who don’t really need to be there.
• Select good meeting times – Try to have your meetings at times that have the least impact on the company and your customers. This way, meetings are not keeping people from actually doing work when they are likely the most productive or most likely to be servicing customers.

Every organization needs meetings to ensure the business will be successful. The mission should be accepting that meetings are necessary and learning how to make them positive and productive.

Source: PalletEnterprise

How hauling trash led to a nationwide company

Back in 1973, Bernie Kamps had an idea. More importantly, he acted on that idea. At 17 years old, he had already begun his first business – hauling garbage to the local landfill. The spark of an idea flourished in this unlikely place. What if all the broken pallets he saw at the landfill were just a little elbow grease away from being as good as new?

We’ve all had moments where a brilliant idea has blossomed in our minds, usually to let it go for another day. But that first step – doing rather than just thinking – is how a business actually begins. And it takes doing and doing day after day to stay in business. How can our company grow? How can we innovate? Pursuing answers to those two questions helped Kamps Pallets grow from a small, local business in 1973 to a nationwide industry leader today.

How do we do it?

• We grow to meet customer needs.
  Kamps didn’t grow just for the sake of becoming a larger company. We grew because that was the best way to meet our customers’ needs. It’s not just about innovation, but innovative solutions. By remaining focused on solving our customers’ problems, we’ve built a strong foundation for our company, one that has lasted 45 years.
• We hire by values.  
  Any business has the capacity to expand and continue infinitely. But it takes a dedicated team to do so. We believe the talented individuals that make up the Kamps Pallets team are our biggest asset. And as such, we look for team members that are focused on providing quality products, efficient services and exceptional value to our customers: the same values our founder demonstrates by example each day.
• We stay open to new ideas.
  Whether your business stays open for 10 years or 10 decades, the market you entered will change constantly. To survive, you’ll need to stay open to new ideas, new solutions and new opportunities. This foresight is what separates the short-lived start-ups from the businesses that leave a legacy.
• We just keep building.
  Building a business is hard work, plain and simple. Building a successful business takes perseverance every day. There will be setbacks and frustrations, but what matters is that you come back every day ready to do it all over again. That’s where the magic lies for the successful entrepreneur. Not in some quick tip or shortcut, but in dedicated action every day.

Led by Bernie, Kamps Pallets has entered new markets, innovated processes and developed new products for the past 45 years. An abundance of never-ending ambition has allowed our company to grow and flourish.

More importantly, we instill this same ambition in every member of our team. We all strive to meet our customers’ needs – and we won’t quit until you are totally satisfied. This is how we deliver the best quality and value to our customers across the United States.

So take action! Whether it’s starting an entirely new business or streamlining your shipping logistics, there’s no better time to start than today. And if you need a little help with the shipping part, reach out to our friendly sales team to get started.

Getting Your Product from Point A to Point B Safely

For manufacturing companies, production is just the first step. Getting that product to its next destination safely and intact is a make or break moment for your manufacturing business. Manufacturers of sensitive goods – like pharmaceuticals, precision parts or even glass – can’t afford an unreliable pallet and shipping container partner. Luckily, those that choose Kamps Pallets can count on our unwavering reliability, as well as our understanding of the unique shipping challenges the manufacturing industry faces.

Shipping from a Tier One Supplier to an OEM

Your product has made it through manufacturing, testing and quality control and is ready to be shipped – great! It needs to arrive on time and in pristine condition, or else the entire final product quickly falls apart. Take windshields for example – the perfect example of a product that must have the highest level of protection in shipping to its final assembly location. Without that promise of safe delivery, the final consumer product could be delayed, or worse, become a safety issue.

One way to address safety issues is through custom pallet design. Through our design program, we uncover the best solution at the best value to meet your safety needs and shipping requirements, like quantity or weight limits. Effective shipping and logistics is a lot like solving a puzzle – and with more than 45 years of experience, we’re well-versed in finding the best solution.

Meeting Shipping Regulations

Shipping regulations are a part of every industry, but manufacturers of pharmaceuticals face a particular challenge. Their product has a direct impact on the lives of many every day, and it’s important that it arrives on time and within a certain temperature range to be the most effective.

Your shipping products need to be able to handle those same conditions without losing integrity. So if that medication needs refrigeration, you better be sure that your pallets will have no problem holding up to those same temperatures for long periods of time. And for those that ship pharmaceuticals internationally, heat-treated wooden pallets will prevent costly delays at customs.

Keeping Precision Parts Safe During Shipping

When you’ve perfectly produced a bearing that only had 1/10,000^th of a tolerance to begin with, you know that damage during shipping is absolutely unacceptable. Whether it’s a small part that makes up a machine to rescue trapped miners or a key computer component that operates the drone to keep our soldiers safe, these products need to be shipped with the utmost care so that when performance counts, they can bring their A-game.

In addition to the custom pallet design we mentioned above, Kamps also provides unique products like corner posts, bracing pieces and protective fillers. Used in combination with sturdy pallets, our boxes, crates and fillers help make sure your product arrives the way it was meant to be.

We’re no strangers to the shipping challenges that the manufacturing industry faces. At Kamps, we focus on innovative solutions, customized pallet management process and trusted service so that you can be confident that your product arrives the way it was intended.

What other challenges are you facing? Contact one of Kamps Pallets’ friendly sales reps today to get started on a solution!

Keeping our team in tip-top shape for the daily slalom

With the 2018 Winter Olympics just around the corner, all eyes will soon be on the elite athletes of our country. But every day, we’ve got our eyes on the industrial athletes at Kamps. While there are no gold medals for our team members, their health and wellness are essential to our company’s ability to provide outstanding products and services.

What are industrial athletes?

Just like professional athletes, industrial athletes use their talents in jobs that require skill, strength, flexibility and endurance. While our pallet builders aren’t racing towards a finish line, they are still competing to exceed the industry standard so that we can provide the very best for our customers. That’s why we count our team among the elite industrial athletes.

Why do we place emphasis on health and wellness?

Just like professional elite athletes, our team members work on the same types of jobs, day in and day out. As any athlete will tell you, repetition and overuse can lead to injury, so we do all we can to prevent injuries to our workers. Keeping their career enjoyable and their body healthy outside of work is one of our top priorities. After all, our team is among our most valuable assets.

How Our Team Trains Like Olympians

• Basic Training
  To be the best, you have to start with the proper skills. Olympic athletes work on the basic mechanics of their sport before ever moving into speed and endurance competitions. Often, this includes breaking motions down movement by movement to understand how the body works together. Likewise, each of our team members goes through training at Kamps, which covers a variety of positions. From pallet builders to fork lift operators, our training ensures that everyone knows how the pieces and parts work together to create our products.
• Injury Prevention
  Making sure you aren’t hindered by avoidable injuries is just as important as improving your performance. Like we said above, overuse and repetition of a specific body part can cause stress and injuries. For Olympic athletes, that may mean going back to the basics and remastering them. For our team, this comes in the form of safety reminders in our monthly newsletter. These safety reminders, along with additional training as needed, keep our teammates safe and alert.
• Proper Preparation
  You may have heard the saying “proper planning prevents poor performance.” We take that to heart. Pallet building and dismantling is a physical job, without a doubt. Our shift leaders take each team through a series of stretches prior to beginning work. These few moments to focus on the physical demands and safe procedures for our team put everyone in the right frame of mind for peak performance during their shift.

When you see an athlete, whether it’s an Olympian or an industrial athlete, they make it look so easy. Keep in mind that each has spent hours and hours mastering the basic skills and training to compete at that level, whether it’s at the Olympics or their next shift.

Are you looking for an opportunity to master your skills or train with some of the best? Visit our Careers page and check out openings near you!