Emhart Glass: President's vision

And, no matter where we do business, we focus our efforts on our customer's needs.
As a true multinational company, Emhart Glass relies on its worldwide presence to build mutually rewarding partnerships with its customers. I am convinced that our ability to serve customers' needs on a local level allows us to cater precisely to the specific requirements of customers worldwide. We must know our customers individually and our markets globally in order to meet expectations and anticipate future needs.

Of course, Emhart Glass' customers do expect continued improvements in productivity through engineering and technological innovation. By supplying value-added technologies and the industry's most comprehensive offering of machines and equipment, we help make the manufacture of glass containers an aesthetically attractive, economically competitive and ecologically sound choice.

The latest proof of the company's innovative spirit is the NIS. This fundamentally New IS machine is the combined result of the sophisticated know-how of Emhart Glass' engineers and the dedication of our development partner, Wiegand-Glas in Germany. The NIS design is state-of the-art and is based on extensive servo-electric technology. It thus allows for complete motion control and feedback, a major step towards production line automation. Over time, this machine will establish the new industry standard. The NIS machine has been under glass since April 1999. Seven more NIS machines are on order at present and actually two of these are repeat orders by existing NIS customers.

In spite of its many advantages, however, glass faces tremendous competitive pressure from other packaging materials. One way we support our customers, who face these pressures head-on, is by improving the production processes to accomplish more with less resources. Continually improving the way we work is the key to competitiveness and economic success.

At Emhart Glass we are enthusiastically embracing the culture of quality consciousness at all levels. Systematic restructuring is creating the streamlined organization we need to maintain world-class standards well into the century. Six Sigma teams are working throughout the company to reduce production variations and to improve our business processes. Some Six Sigma projects are jointly done with our customers. To learn more about our Six Sigma Projects, please click here.

We create our future being by living by our highest standards: We are dedicated exclusively to progress and profitability of the global Glass Container Industry. Our Company is striving for technological innovations as a means to increase the Glass Container Industry's competitiveness. And we are committed to highest quality standard targets in all areas: employees, products, services and processes. We want to achieve operational excellence in all areas.

Our efforts are helping Emhart Glass achieve something that is, while difficult to quantify, critical to business: momentum. It is the responsibility and, I hope the desire of us all, to use this momentum to make Emhart Glass a world-class product and service enterprise. Together we are heading in the right direction.