Labeling Innovations from Weber

 

Give your logo a mustache

This month we celebrated a significant employee anniversary. Our label manufacturing director, Joe Ibrahim, was awarded a service award for 35 years at Weber Packaging Solutions.

I recently sat down with Joe to get to know more about him and his experience working at Weber for 35 years.

 

I noticed you have a large collection of golf trinkets on your desk. I take it you enjoy golfing?

I love to play golf and one of the biggest things that happened to me while golfing was my hole in one in 2005. The funny thing about that was that usually people play their whole life without getting one, so it's exciting but when I called my wife to tell her, she said, "So?"

 

What's your favorite golf course to play at?

Highland Woods in Hoffman Estates. It's pretty open so you have to make a pretty bad shot to not do well there. I played my best game there a few months ago. I shot a 75.

 

How did you get your start here? And what positions have you held?

At 20, I came to America in 1975 as a refugee from Baghdad, Iraq, and started working in Detroit, Michigan at a radiator factory. In 1977, my brother had been working at Weber in Arlington Heights IL and called me about a job opening. I drove down here for an interview, got the job and started that night as a packer.

From 1977 to 1990 I held several positions including packer, press operator, group leader and supervisor. In 1990, I had the opportunity to move to Canada to lead our manufacturing facility near Toronto in Mississauga, Canada. After a few years, I returned to run night shift label production. When we upgraded our computer system to Oracle’s ERP system, I had the opportunity to head up a new department called Label Engineering where we coordinated our customers label specifications through the production process.

Since opening our doors in 1932 as a small addressing machine company, Weber Packaging Solutions has earned worldwide status as a manufacturer of labels and labeling systems as we now celebrate our 80th anniversary.

And our past speaks for itself.

Here's a look back at some of Weber's Milestones:

• 1932 - Joe Weber Sr. founded Weber Addressing Machine Co in Chicago, IL
• 1938 - Weber Addressing Machine introduced the first handprinter, the Tag-O-Graph Jr.
• 1947 - Weber Addressing Machine changes to Weber Marking Systems and moves to Mt Prospect IL
• 1952 - Weber introduces the first electro-mechanical in-plant label printing machine
• 1967 - Weber moved to its current headquarters of Arlington Heights, IL
• 1973 - Weber opens facility in the United Kingdom
• 1974 - Weber installs its first rotary flexographic press
• 1992 - Joseph Weber Jr. becomes Chairman & CEO
• 1998 - The first Weber-manufactured label printer-applicator was introduced
• 2005 - RFID smart label manufacturing starts at Weber
• 2009 - Weber expands label printing capabilities to include an HP Indigo digital press
• 2011 - The corporate name changed to Weber Packaging Solutions

For more highlights of Weber's history, see the milestones page of our website.

A few months ago we previewed our new Model 4300 Pro-Apply. Check out our national sales director, Rhett Campbell, showing the new printer applicator to the Packaging World audience.

We are excited to share with our readers that we have completed the first 4300 Pro-Apply unit and shipped it to our customer. The system was designed and built at our global headquarters in Arlington Heights, IL.

As Jessie Gonzalez (left) and Kevin Valentine (right) finished testing the applicator, I asked them some questions about the finished product.

 

Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) labels and tags are a great solution to manage inventory and control warehouse costs. We frequently work with customers who want to save money on missing pallets or save time that is otherwise used for manually counting inventory. In addition to tracking products, you can also use them to work with people.

I recently came across an interesting article about RFID wristbands for the music festival Bonnaroo. At Bonnaroo, concert attendees were given a wristband as a ticket that could be linked to their social media accounts.

I recently read an article in The Washington Times asserting that many products that bear the label “Made in America” are largely built outside of the United States. In fact, according to the article, some products with as much as 90 percent of their components coming from outside the U.S. can still qualify for the “Made in America” label due to a loophole in the product-label system.

One California businessman, who claims the practice is deceptive, is working with his congressman to update existing labeling laws in an effort to give consumers a much better sense of where their products really come from.

It’s an interesting article that highlights the pros and cons of establishing – and complying with – new labeling guidelines. One potential pitfall, the article states, is that a new law would make it difficult for companies to print detailed product labels.

However, while it might be a chore to determine the exact percentages of the contribution of each country to the final product, today’s label printing technology makes it pretty easy to print the necessary details.

We often work with customers who need to make revisions to their labels. Common revisions include:

• Address changes
• New material because of a change in use
• New company logo
• New information about the product that needs to be labeled