Susan Sinclair, vp of operations engineering for The Hershey Company presented these observations at interpack:

• Major investments in packaging machinery have tended to be from European OEMs. Hershey is looking to new sources, including China, India, and Brazil with a concurrent opening of controls standards.

• Lately Hershey has focused more on secondary packaging than primary, caused largely by marketplace preference.

• Objectives at interpack included evaluating new technology, identifying new suppliers and alerting the global supplier community to emerging Hershey needs.

• Lower-cost producing environments continue to attract Hershey management. The firm is likely to look globally.

• A key strategy is to use manufacturing capabilities to react to 2-3 year product life cycles versus 5-10 years.

• Better controls technology will play a key role. Hershey is trying to drive controls integration standards -- OMAC Packaging Workgroup involvement reflects that.

• More SKUs, time to market, shorter product life cycles and customization make scalability, fast changeover and contract packaging critical. Long runs are a thing of the past.

• Hershey is trying to strengthen operator technical skills through training and shift technicians from repairing to maintaining and improving systems.