Packed with Pearson

On this episode of Packed With Pearson, Host Tyler Kern talked with Scott Reed, Vice President of Sales for Syntakt Packaging Integrations, and Michael Senske, President of R.A., Pearson Holding Company. They dug into the big news of the formal separation of Pearson's System Solutions Group from Pearson Packaging Group. The packaging side of the business is now Syntakt Packaging Integrations. “Historically, Pearson Packaging Systems has been a company that's focused on producing individual discrete machine centers, packaging machinery, and small cells,” Senske explained. “Several years ago, we started offering complete end-of-line solutions.” With these new solutions, the Pearson System Solutions Group emerged to create fully integrated solutions. But, for various reasons, there's been confusion about who does what, so they decided to launch a separate organization that isn't machine-oriented. “What we really wanted to do is kind of launch a separate organization that really is not machine-specific,” Senske said. “Its role isn't to design and manufacture packaging machinery. It is really to provide engineering services, project management services, integration services, and provide customers with complete end-of-line solutions.” The overall end result is a business that is a separate entity with a separate core competency, with a separate group of employees. This new entity is Syntakt Packaging Integrations. “We're really focused on the end-of-line … full turn-key systems on the end of the line,” Reed said. “Case erect, case pack, case seal, palletize, and many of the technologies that are intermingled in that.”

The labor shortage in the U.S. is reaching crisis level. Even with mass vaccine rollout, there's still about 10 million people unemployed, and the economy only gained about 266,000 jobs in April, a number considered meager by most economists.

For customers and OEMs, it isn't enough to have a state-of-the-art packaging system; service needs to also meet the highest standards. Pearson Packaging Systems' Rolando Pena, Director of Customer Service, and Brian Patrick, Vice President of Engineering, spoke about the many service options Pearson provides to its customer and OEM base and how their service model is a value add. Pena said that Pearson strives to provide its customers with service approaches that meet their needs as promptly as possible, no matter when that service need should arise. “And, from the OEM side, we're looking to give our customers more capacity from our service teams,” Patrick said. “How do we make that happen faster? We want to be able to get the experts connected quickly.”So, how does Pearson make these service needs happen? It's through a combination of field and remote support. “At Pearson, we have a tech support team that's available 24/7,” Pena said. “We utilize those resources to help our service techs in the field when doing installations, but also with our customers, making sure that they can reach out to these resources.” Pearson provides several tech support resources and tools for customers and OEMs. One recent tool added is Vuforia Chalk, which allows Pearson to connect directly with the customer on the phone while they are on the shop floor, see what the customer sees and help guide them to fix the issue.And Pearson also employs an E1 connection that gives them direct access to the customer's machine to diagnose and resolve problems remotely. And, for those customers who do not have the infrastructure to support these technical capabilities, Pearson always has a customer support team available to speak with on the phone.

A new partnership between Pearson Packaging and Plus One Robotics aims to provide AI-driven solutions to secondary packaging. Michael Senske, President & CEO of Pearson Packaging, and Brent Barcey, VP Business Development, Plus One Robotics, shared this partnership's details, how it formed and what they plan to accomplish by joining forces.

When it comes to case packing, is there such a thing as an off-the-shelf solution? That was the focus of the conversation on this installment of Packed with Pearson.

Pearson Packaging Systems has a rich history dating back six decades, but the company is working to remain one of the most technology advanced players providing vertically integrated packaging solutions.While Pearson may be known primarily for erecting and sealing, Michael Senske, Chairman and CEO of Pearson Packaging Systems, noted the company has experience in other areas, as well. “One of the areas is really case packing. Pearson Packaging Systems has been case packing in one form or another, really, since the 70s, but in December of 2008, we acquired a company, Goodman Packaging Equipment, that specialized in top-load case packaging,” he said. “A lot of flexible products, standup pouches, pillow bags – [we're] doing a lot of shelf-ready applications.”Pearson also has experts in robotic case packing and has been utilizing automation for many years. Customers have become more open to those solutions recently, Senske said, with the COVID-19 pandemic showing just how powerful those tools can be.“Our industry is incredibly slow, historically, to adopt technology. One of the things I'm really excited about is the pandemic has forced a lot of our end customers to adopt technologies out of necessity, like remote access,” he said. “That wasn't the primary approach they wanted to take. I think what the pandemic has shown is that they've wanted to limit the number of people coming into their facilities, and they've been more and more willing to take what they perceive as some of these risks and adopt these new technologies.”It's one of many cutting-edge ideas keeping Pearson at the forefront of the packaging industry.