2017 - A Year of Optimism, Change and Improvement

2017 is shaping up to be a very good year for the economy here in the United States. Sales are running a little over the budget and there seems to be a momentum building. The economy for the past several years has been slowly getting stronger although we have not felt that our customer were feeling confident in investing in and developing new packages or promotional programs. This year, we are finding a much more positive outlook.

What is changing at Independent Can in 2017?

• We have restructured our leadership team in Operations to more effectively focus leadership in each of our 5 manufacturing plants.
• We have restructured our Sales leadership into focused sales teams to allow market experts to respond to customer needs and solve problems.
• We continue to integrate the Steeltin business unit into the entire Independent Can structure and customer-centric mindset.
• We have taken all decorative can manufacturing lines out of the Steeltin plant and repositioned them to better service all of our customers. Logistics is becoming more and more expensive, consequently, placing the assembly line closer to customer will save money for all and allow for faster delivery.
• We are also working on Centers of Excellence in product lines to allow the mechanical staff and production processing to be very attuned to the customer expectations and needs.

These continue to be exciting times and there are many opportunities for new projects and processes being brought on line in the next 6 -12 months. We are operating in an industry that is thought to be very mature and with minimal obvious growth markets. The reality is that we are constantly being challenged to step up to build new metal packaging structures.

I want to thank all of our employees for their dedication to the new electronic systems that we are beginning to roll out in our manufacturing plants. The new ERP (Enterprise Resource

 Planning) system is now installed in our Steeltin plant and will be rolled out at the other facilities over the next 9 months. This system will provide real time inventory to all employees throughout the company. We have installed bar coding and bin locations in most all locations and this has resulted in a much more accurate inventory process. Dates Matter is one of our mantras and unless we have confidence in the floor stock of components and finished goods we are guessing at the shipping dates.

Thank you to all of our customers for their support of the process improvement endeavors that are underway. We know that the more responsive we are to you and ultimately to your customers’ needs and expectations, the better we are as a resource.

As your supplier or if you are looking for a new source, rest assured that we are on a continuous improvement journey and we know this is a marathon and not a sprint.

Thank you again and we look forward to service your packaging needs.

Rick

Richard Huether

President and CEO