As most business owners know, time is money. The more efficient a business is, the more profits that business can make. With help from the Space Alliance Technology Outreach Program (SATOP), Desert Paper and Envelope Co., Inc. (DP&E) in Albuquerque, N. M., found out just how much time and money can be saved with increased workplace efficiency.

Desert Paper and Envelope provides envelope and paper solutions for the printing industry throughout New Mexico. Due to their wide range of manufacturing and printing capabilities, DP&E has become the largest provider of envelopes to the New Mexico market.
Lately, the envelope manufacturer suffered from a disorganized workshop, lengthy training periods for new employees, and machine changeover times as long as three hours. All these headaches contributed to decreased production levels and increased downtime and waste output.

When Ella Leeper heard about SATOP from her New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership consultant, she saw the opportunity to finally solve the company’s efficiency problems. “We had spent many man hours organizing the work shop only to have it regress within weeks. Training is difficult due to terms specific to our industry and finding prospective employees with experience is virtually impossible since we are the only envelope manufacturer in the state,” Leeper says. “We needed solutions that would work and that would last.”

SATOP assigned DP&E’s case to Diane Morrisey, an engineer with the New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NMMEP). With Morrisey’s and SATOP’s assistance, DP&E has begun reorganizing the workshop and implementing workforce development and operator training on LEAN Manufacturing principles.

Since SATOP’s intervention, Leeper sees vast improvements on the horizon at DP&E, including increased production, operator awareness, less downtime, less scrap and waste, a cleaner work environment and increased economic development for the area. The machine change times that had run as long as three hours will decrease to as little as 15 minutes. “We are much more organized and on our way to a completely LEAN Manufacturing environment,” Leeper says. And what does all this translate to in the end? Huge cost savings for DP&E, because after all time is money!