52 | Finat Label ForumFounder impulses typically cluster around three elements: an “Panel sessions covered the obsession with the front line, an insurgent mindset, and a bias for action, along with a strong cash focus and aversion to bureaucracy.future of family-owned converter Bar-Shany applied this model to the Indigo label team’s businesses and the smaller development of the HP Indigo 20000 press at a time when HP wanted to focus more on the commercial print market. independent converter in the face This required an ‘insurgent’ belief in a potential new market adjacent to labels, accepting some risk of cannibalizing existing of rapid industry consolidation”sales but mitigating this by strongly supporting existing customers. The end result was opening up a new market sector in digital interest to label converters. Panel sessions discussed the future of fexible packaging.family-owned converter businesses and the smaller independent converter in the face of rapid industry consolidation. There were Big data, recruitment, supply chainsQ+A sessions with converting groups and materials suppliers The concept of Big Data was examined in a session that included looking at how the industry can become more resilient in the face Dutch converter Geostick - which under Tom Schouten’s youthful of chaotic supply chain conditions (these will be covered in more leadership has pushed the boundaries in automation and data detail in the next edition of L&L). handling - and Guido Iannone, who is driving automation initiatives One often overlooked factor in building a resilient industry is at global converting powerhouse All4Labels.company culture. MPS’ Marius van Lith explained how automation, digitization Digital label industry veteran Alon Bar-Shany detailed how, at and Big Data address the key productivity challenges facing label Indigo, he had built a management culture that maintained the converters today: increasingly scarce operator skills, increasing ‘insurgent’ vision of the founder as the company expanded after the pressures on price, smaller order sizes, under-utilization of capital HP acquisition. assets, and a push toward sustainability.Bar-Shany explained that as companies grow, they encounter The essential building blocks include Cloud-based connectivity a set of forces that tend to push them off course. The founder’s between machines, factory-wide MIS, and the human/machine impulse starts to wane, and the company moves from an insurgent interface. Each machine needs to be ftted with real-time to a ‘struggling bureaucracy.’ A robust company culture — defned performance monitoring, and machine learning algorithms advise by Bar-Shany as ‘the stories employees tell about the management/ managers how to tune and improve overall performance.CEO over the water cooler’ — helps defy these trends and maintain To help the audience visualize Big Data in practice, Tom Schouten the founder’s insurgency impulse. showed a live demo of a control panel representing real-time data labelsandlabeling.com