Crayola’s CEO leaned in to automation when everyone else was offshoring and now he’s reaping the rewards

Despite this background, though, Crayola – the most successive pen maker in the world – extends to a different hunt. At that time, the House of Rogero, an executive director of operations, believed that the children’s art supply maker could be more efficient by staying close to the house.

Peter Rogero, CEO of the company said luck. “In 2007, when many people were making decisions in front of the beach, I said strategically to our CEO at that time, this response close to the market is a decisive capacity.”

It was found that Rogero, who was then the CEO of the company for operations and global technology, was true-which led to Craiola well expanding to ride the indirect tariff when president Donald Trump announced last spring.

Today, while Craiola sources are from a number of countries including Brazil and Vietnam, “70 % of what we sell worldwide, and we are manufactured in Wadi Lahay”, he told Rogerowo luck.

The 140 -year -old company has been operating in East Pennsylvania since 1902, and today has employed 500 manufacturing workers in the region. I moved to the area when the founders, Edward Benny and Harold Smith, built a small facility there to take advantage of the water energy in the area and its abundant list. (Before Crayola was made, he was known for the pencils and the first “chalk without dust”, famous for teachers.)

But the process was not simple like sitting and watching the money in: Craiola wanted to become more efficient and more profitable. So in 2007, the company began a sphere of self -improvement to get rid of waste and increase production by automating the main operations. This included investing in the new high -speed production operations and waste of waste through the Lean Six Sigma method, which is the philosophy of companies where workers are encouraged to raise problems.

Rogero told luck. It was not sure that he would work immediately. “I was imagining, when we did it, this is old I love Lucy An episode where you try to pack chocolate, and I say, there is no way for our employees to do all this work. ”

Rick Smith – photo

But the process succeeded, increasing capacity and creating better products. The first wave saved the company 1.5 million dollars, according to the MINITAB program provider, a Cryola seller. Today, all the 3 billion colors that the company manufactures every year are manufactured through high -speed rotary molds capable of getting rid of 1,300 coloring per minute.

The company is not completely immune from the supply chain problems. Necessarily, they are sources of colored pencils from the renewable pine forest in Brazil – something that cannot be repeated in the United States, because there is no such forest here. “Nothing we can really do. It’s just an additional cost for us,” said Rogero. Forbes newly.

But its relative isolation means that, instead of scrambled to find new sources of products, the CEO can focus on building other revenue flows – in recreational programming and expanding recreational gardens in Crayola across the United States and worldwide.

“Although we sometimes feel that we can be better as we work today, compared to where we were working in 2019, the volume of our business increases by 30 %, 40 %” since that time. “It has grown, has grown, has grown, and now we are still growing.”