IPS Adhesives recently announced that it has established a manufacturing Center of Excellence in its Durham, N.C., ISO 9001:2015-certified facility. The new center coincides with recent investments in production, including those planned or already in progress, as well as the company’s efforts in centralizing its North American R&D and customer service activities at the facility.
According to the company, the facility will provide customers with enhanced on-time delivery and faster response times through new, more agile processes. Part of this includes an established standard stocking of 165 of the company’s best-selling colors, with the ability to quickly produce another 100+ colors to order.
Creating the Center of Excellence also reportedly included several changes following IPS’ Continuous Improvement process, which added more production cells and increased output. It also involved the implementation of a new QC tinting/testing lab dedicated to surfacing adhesives and hosting the latest color-matching and verification technology. With the upgrades, the company’s transition is complete for the manufacturing of surfacing adhesives under the Integra Adhesives brand from Abbotsford, Canada, to Durham. IPS reports that the shift will result in production and customer support teams being geographically closer to the majority of the market, thereby boosting service.
“Our goals for the Center of Excellence is to provide Quick Response to our customers, provide even higher quality product in more colors that you can’t get anywhere else, and continue to drive global scalability through new and innovative ways, focused on always improving our performance,” said Eric Greene, vice president of Lean Transformation at IPS Adhesives. “The CoE will drive IPS Adhesives’ mission to be one of the best in the world at the make-tint-fill process for surfacing adhesives; to be better and faster than the competition while creating world class products that are the most reliable on the market.”
For more information, visit www.ipscorp.com.
