Records Shattered At Niagara Sheets - bhs-world.com

November 21, 2011 THE WHITE SHEET
Vol. 27, No. 47
In North Tonawanda, New York:
As the saying goes, records are made to be broken.
Whether it’s a home run record, a hot dog eating
record, or in the case of Niagara Sheets, the North
Tonawanda, New York based sheet feeder, a
new board production record, you can be
sure that a lot of training,discipline and prior
performances were invested in the effort. In
the case of Niagara Sheets, it was a combination
of all three…and a 110-inch BHS corrugator.
Just three years into its rebirth as a sheet
feeding operation outside of Buffalo, the former
Smurfit-Stone facility now houses a
strong production team and a BHS corrugator
that delivers quality board to its consortium
of three owners – Jamestown
Container, RockTenn and Norampac – as
well as a stable of customers in upstate New
York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Ontario,
Canada.That Niagara Sheets can continue to
meet its production goals and achieve
record setting runs while doing so is not
only a testament to the machinery, but to the
systems and philosophies that have been
established by management from day one.
“We make it and we ship it,” says Skip Polowy,Vice
President of Operations at Niagara Sheets. “We have
very little room for staging finished goods. It’s off the
corrugator, stacked, banded, scanned and on a specific
truck for a specific customer.”
In addition to his role as VP, Polowy was the Project
Manager who oversaw the conversion of the former
Smurfit-Stone plant into the showpiece that it’s
become. This involved adding an additional 40,000
square-feet of space for the new corrugator,eight additional
bays to the loading dock to bring the total to 15,
TM
BOARD CONVERTING NEWS
An N.V. Publication
Records Shattered
At Niagara Sheets
by Len Prazych
banders by Signode, conveyorization by Systec and
computerization by Avista that allows Niagara Sheets
to move bundled product out the door almost as fast
Skip Polowy, Vice President of Operations at Niagara Sheets, points to the recordbreaking
number that earned the sheet feeder BHS Platinum Performer status.
as it takes fresh rolls in.The 192,000 square-foot facility
allocates about120,000 square-feet as storage area
for as many as 1,800 stock rolls that are received by
both truck and rail 24/7. On average, Niagara Sheets
ships 60 truckloads a day, the record being 87 in one
24-hour period.
Records And Recognition
Niagara Sheets has both the capacity and the capability
to achieve record runs with regularity. One
might think that record breaking for the sake of
record breaking – and the recognition that comes

with it – happens with precise planning. It does not,
insists Polowy.
“Our orders are different every day and we work
within a 24-hour window so there is no opportunity
to arrange orders that may result in another record-setting
shift.We run what we get, whether the customer
wants it tomorrow, or tonight, or this afternoon,” he
says.
Niagara Sheets’ 110-inch BHS corrugator occupies a 40,000 squarefoot
addition that was made to the former Smurfit-Stone facility.
The new milestone set this past August was for
206,311.8 MSF of board shipped for the month. This
equates to more than 25 million lineal feet or as one
worker put it,“enough corrugated to go from Niagara
Falls to Las Vegas and back.”
“One of our goals from the beginning was to be part
of the 400 Club,” says Polowy, referring to the production
of 400,000 lineal feet of board in one eight-hour
shift.“Any time a shift does that, it’s a big deal and we
recognize the achievement.” Since the sheet feeder
opened three years ago, 21 shifts have joined the 400
Club.The first shift held the record of 433,664 lineal
feet in 8 hours until August 30, when the second shift
broke it with a new record of 436,900 lineal feet in
eight hours.
Given the number of orders in a day, sometimes as
many as 500,every changeover creates another opportunity
for something to go wrong and create downtime.
But when the BHS is running like new at speeds
of over 1,000 feet per minute, that rarely happens.An
initiative by BHS has helped.
Maintenance To Productivity
One way to keep a machine running like new is regular
and meticulous maintenance. The BHS Maintenance
To Productivity program, M2P1 for short, dictates
that the supplier will provide all the maintenance personnel
and spare parts for the machine for at least the
first three years.The personnel includes two BHS senior
techs for training and three local BHS-trained technicians.
“Our goal is to keep the machine in OEM specs and
OEM condition so it always runs at maximum speeds,”
says Polowy, revealing another reason that production
records continue to fall at the plant. Polowy said that
Niagara Sheets has renewed the 3-year contract for the
M2P1 program that recently expired. Currently, a technician
is either on-site or on-call 24/7.
Niagara Sheets also has a Pay for Skills program,
where different operators are trained in multiple
skills.The more skills they learn, the more money they
make.Currently,about half of the company’s 48 hourly
production people are certified to the top skill level in
the program. For example, a control room operator
who’s been cross-trained on the corrugator can fill in
for a wet-end operator who is on vacation. Conversely
a cross-trained wet-end operator can jump in if a control
room operator is out sick.“At any given time we
can move personnel around,so we’re not impacted by
someone on vacation or out sick,” says Polowy. “We
always have employees who are cross-trained and
ready to step in.The more skills they have, the more
they get paid.Performance-wise,we don’t miss a beat.”
The Control Room aka ‘Wayne’s World’: Control Room Operator
Wayne Sherk, center, works lockstep with Production Manager
Glenn Giles, left, and Production Supervisor Jeff Gebauer, right.
A BHS Platinum Performer
Recognition of record-breaking achievements can
also be a great motivator.BHS has its own rewards program
that it started in 2009 to recognize and reward
customers who achieve outstanding production and
performances on their BHS Corrugator. Called “The
BHS Platinum Performer,” winning plants are awarded
a pizza party, t-shirts imprinted with the record and an
award plaque that is posted at the facility.
“Since every corrugator and every plant is different,
the award is typically based on a plant’s own goals as
well as what BHS considers to be a “Platinum” performance,”
says Ashley Urbanski, Sales & Marketing
Administrator at BHS. “Since Niagara Sheets recently

oke their previous record, we’ve ‘upgraded’ them to
a cookout.” Both Urbanski and BHS Northeast Sales
Rep Dave Comiso were in North Tonawanda on a
recent and unseasonably mild November afternoon at
Niagara Sheets to grill up a feast of Sahlen’s hot dogs
and thick Italian sausage patties, complete with sides
of salads, slaws and soft drinks.
A Signode bander secures another bundle of board prior
to shipping to a Niagara Sheets customer.
“We are always excited to hear when a customer
breaks a record on their BHS Corrugator and it is certainly
not a one time occurrence at Niagara Sheets,”
says Greg Grdinich, National Sales Manager of BHS-
Corrugated North America.“Niagara Sheets is a world
class operation and anyone who has had the opportunity
to visit their facility will tell you it is evident in
every aspect of their business. They have created a
culture of success and we are excited to be part of it
with the BHS Corrugator and M2P program.With the
M2P program there is no greater life cycle relationship
between a customer and machine supplier. Congratulations
to all at Nigara Sheets on a job well done, I’m
sure it won’t be their last record.”
Quality Is Still Priority One
Production records mean nothing if quality suffers,
but at Niagara Sheets, it hasn’t. Nor has the innovative
drive that will undoubtedly result in more records.
Skip Polowy designed a special online slit-score tooling
system that was
installed by BHS with
new software, a setup no
other BHS corrugator
customer has.The special
tooling heads have razorsharp
blades that slit one
liner and the flutes, providing
a clean slit-score
edge used for corner
posts, interior pads and
tri-fold display boards.
The configuration has
allowed Niagara Sheets
to provide new products for its customers.
© 2011 • NV Business Publishers • www.nvpublications.com
BHS ‘record-breaking’ plaque
hangs in the breakroom.
The company does have future plans to offer additional
specialty products by upgrading its BHS single
facer and adding a third set of knife bars with third
stacker at the dry end, which are both on Polowy’s
‘wish list’ for next year.
As for its current production goals, Niagara Sheets is
on pace to achieve the two billion square feet it set
when it opened shop three years ago. It depends on
what happens over the next couple of months,
according to Skip Polowy, referring to the vagaries of
the economy, Buffalo’s lake-effect snows, and good old
supply and demand. Given the fact the sheet feeder
achieved its year one goal of 1.4 BSF and year two goal
of 1.9 BSF, one gets the sense that there’s a good
chance that the two BSF milestone will be accomplished…along
with another broken record or two
along the way.