 Hi again everyone, I'm Jim George, IOPP Director of Education and welcome to today's webinar. At IOPP we do a webinar just about every month and today's very special presentation is a joint effort of IOPP and the Contract Packaging Association. So welcome today as well to our attendees from the CPA. So as we begin I want to take a quick moment wearing my IOPP hat to acknowledge the companies you see on your screen. They're IOPP's benefactors and their support goes a long way toward making IOPP's education programs including this webinar and all of our webinars possible. So we thank them for their continued support and I hope you'll have the opportunity to support them too. So as I mentioned a bit ago today's presentation is a partnership between the Contract Packaging Association and IOPP and it's a little bit different than our IOPP members on the line are used to seeing. Today we have a panel discussion on trends in contract packaging and also where and how contract packages can help you. So I'm going to get out of the way now and introduce you to our panel moderator Vicki Smitley. Vicki is vice president of sales and marketing at Hearthside Foods Solutions, a leading North American contract manufacturing and packaging company that offers solutions to consumer package goods companies that work in the food packaging space. Vicki has been with Hearthside Foods Solutions for more than 20 years doing both business on a national and global front. In addition Vicki has been involved in various contract packaging association activities and committees since 2001 and she currently serves as the association's president. So I'm going to turn things over to Vicki adding just a quick note here that we will be taking audience questions during the panel discussion. So we're going to have our chat function off and you'll have an opportunity to ask your question. There's a little questions box on your screen that you'll be able to type questions into the questions field and we'll get to as many of them as time allows near the end of the hour. So Vicki I think I'll turn things over to you now to say a few words about the contract packaging association and then introduce our panelists and then lead our panel discussion. All right well thank you Jim and IOPP for the invitation to talk to you today about trends driving changes in the supply chain. This is a very hot topic these days and before I get into this I do want to mention that if you're looking for more content and conversation on this topic you may want to consider attending the upcoming CPA annual meeting that is happening next month. And we will have a panel of industry experts discussing justice topic. And on your screen you see Jill Gabbard's picture she's the person to chat with there's her phone number listed or you can get more information about the annual meeting coming up at our website at www.contractpackaging.org. So before I introduce our panel I'd like to set the stage by providing our audience with a very brief overview of the contract packaging association and the industry as we see it. The contract packaging association is a national non-profit association for contract packages and contract manufacturers as well as the many suppliers to these companies. The association was founded in 1992 so we're very excited to be celebrating our 25th anniversary this year. The CPA is run by member company volunteers just like myself and the rest of the board of directors and committee members along with CPA staff. And Kellen Company is our association management firm and has been our management partner for about 15 years now. Today our association is about 200 member companies strong and growing rapidly. We believe in building a better supply chain it is through education, networking and industry exposure that we help members innovate and grow their businesses. Essentially this is the key reason for the CPA existence to serve our members. On the screen you have in front of you a few facts and figures and these were extracted from the 2014 industry report which is published by the contract packaging association. The industry report is published every three years and the 2017 industry report is well underway today and will be available later this year for sale. So you want to look for that. Again if anyone has any interest in Nose and Jill is also the point person for more information around the timing of that publication. Our members manufacture or package a huge variation of products from the glamorous to the hazardous we often say. 65% of our member companies manufacture packaged food products but we also have members that package personal care or even auto parts and some other markets that are listed here on your screen as well. So why do companies outsource their products you might be wondering we compile the list of the most common reasons. The nimble nature of contract manufacturers generally equates to a lower overall cost solution and a faster path to market. After all speed is critical to a product success and we will be talking a lot about speed. Speed to market or rather speed to consumer here in a few minutes. To touch on this last bullet today many brand donors are choosing to partner with contract packages to be their operating arm so they can focus exclusively on the sales and marketing of their brand. Many in the industry predict this trend will only increase in the coming years. So let's get into it. On our panel today we have representatives from three CPA member companies that will speak to the key emerging trends. As I introduce each speaker I'd like to ask that they give a brief overview of their company. First up today Rob Reinders is a CEO of performance packaging from Las Vegas, Nevada. Rob would you please introduce your company. We may have some connectivity problems with Rob so we're going to move on and also joining us today is Mike Rapp. Mike is a Vice President and General Manager of Bell Carter Packaging and Mike's business is based in Modesto, California. Mike can you give us a brief overview of Bell Carter Packaging? You bet, thank you Vicki. Bell Carter Packaging headquarters are here in Modesto, California. We focus on being a total end-end resource for our customers. We're providing services for warehousing, production and fulfillment and we do that all from three locations here in the western U.S. Northern California, Phoenix, Arizona and Portland, Oregon. Eighty-five percent of our business is related to both primary and secondary food packaging with the other twenty-five percent focused on promotional packaging and non-food product lines. We are very focused on quality and carry strong certifications from SQF, AIB, we have organic, gluten-free, kosher and a number more. We have two hundred and fifty professional and well-trained employees and it's great to be on the call today Vicki. Well thanks for joining us. Mike, look forward to the next few minutes coming up and chatting with you on this important topic. Last but not least we have Jason Sam. I'm hoping Jason has successfully dialed in to join us today. Jason is the CEO of Neulogy Corporation in East. Hopefully he will be joining us from Toronto this afternoon. Jason, are you on the line? I'm being told that we have some technical difficulties with a couple of our panelists. So we're going to go ahead and get started and Mike has some very interesting perspectives on all of the trends that we're going to talk about today. We'll hope that our other panelists get dialed in here soon but until then we're going to carry on. Sounds good. Okay, so to ground us on the screen is a graphic depicting the traditional supply chain. And when I think of a historical game changer in this traditional supply chain, my mind immediately goes to the first moving assembly line. In 1913 this invention made it possible for Henry Ford to build cars in two and a half hours instead of 12 hours. This was the creation of mass production as we know it. And this innovation in effect drove out considerable cost, so much so that it became possible for just anyone to own a car, not just the elite. So change, or rather seed change, is the focus of our discussion today. The first trend we want to discuss today is the change in consumer buying habits. I personally one click everything from cat food to birthday gifts and these things seem to magically appear at my doorstep in no time. So Mike, I will start with you and as others join in on the line as soon as I get noticed that they're on and our problems are resolved, we'll let the others join in. But until then you're it. Contract packages tend to be very entrepreneurial and resourceful. How has the Internet of Things and the change in consumer buying habits influenced your business? What can you share with us? You know, Vicki, one of the things that has definitely changed for us, we've become very focused in the last five years on becoming a total resource. And by a total resource, I mean where we've moved ourselves into the position where we are the procurement arm, or the warehousing arm, or the production arm, and we're providing the fulfillment back to our customers. And I think as part of that, we've had to become very adaptive to shorter runs and more items being run every day and handled in our operations to make this effective in service our customers. We've definitely, like you had for the key changes in the industry, we've definitely become more flexible in our operations, we've become extremely flexible in our planning. And one of the main things that we've done is we've really gone after the e-commerce side of the business, where we have set up the operations to handle pick and packs, customization basically being driven at individuals. And we're utilizing systems like Shopify, Magento, and all coordinating with ShipStation to make sure that we are handling all of our customer's orders basically same day, next day turns for customization of orders. And we've really had to work ourselves, we were not used to that, but we have definitely become change agents in adapting to the trends. I definitely agree with what you're saying there, Mike, as well. This is Jason here. Hi, Jason, thanks for joining. Would you give us just a brief overview of Noology for the audience as we roll into this today, please? Sure, and I guess maybe it's a good segue because Mike was speaking about the technologies that are certainly enabling this economy, this new economy. And at Noology on the CEO, what we do at Noology is we connect brands to their strategic suppliers. That means co-packers and co-manufacturers and 3PLs to reduce costs, increase quality, and to grow their business to higher quality, more customized products. Most of our business is in food and beverage, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, also some electronics. Our technology is a SaaS or cloud-based solution offered in over six languages, and we have offices that are all in the world and are live in six continents serving some of the largest brands and their suppliers to make products better and higher quality and at lower cost through the automation of what we call the digitization of the customization supply chain. Fantastic. Well, thank you for that. I understand that Rob is available on the line as well. Hopefully you can hear me now. I can hear you now. Rob, CEO of Performance Packaging, would you please give us a brief overview of your company? Sure, thank you, Vicki, and I apologize for the connection troubles to all out there. Performance Packaging has been in the flexible packaging business for 21 years now. And we saw the trend for contract manufacturing growing probably nine or 10 years ago, which led us to join the Contract Packaging Association. And it's been one of the best moves that we've done for our company. We're able to integrate with other areas, contract manufacturers out there and help them with their packaging solutions along with their customers. Fantastic. So Rob, I'll ask you. I'm not sure if you heard the question earlier. And we were talking about contract packages being very entrepreneurial and resourceful, and wondering if you can share with us a little bit about how the Internet of Things and the change in consumer buying habits has influenced your business. Well, I think Mike hit it on the head, and obviously his business model has been geared and ramped up towards that. Similar situation for us. We're very familiar with Amazon and really what Amazon has done is they've changed the playing field. And now it's no longer the big guys that create and distribute products anymore, but it's allowed entrepreneurs of all sizes to be able to get involved into the retail climate. So with that, there then becomes a much broader customer base to go after, but it's also a much smaller size company that you're going after. So the runs are smaller, and you just have to be working on lean manufacturing and cutting out as many things as you can in the process to be nimble enough to handle this new technology. Thank you. Thank you. Well, it certainly sounds like your companies are keeping pace with the change. But in general, a sea change really is here and now. It's upon us. Is it your opinion that the overall manufacturing world is ready for the internet of things? Jason, I would ask that you respond first, and then we'll turn it over to Rob and Mike in that order. Yes, so the internet of things obviously suggests this visualization and the expectation to be able to connect various entities within the supply chain. And in this case, as we talked about Amazon and other, they really raise the expectation on the consumer side, which means that consumers, you and I, are able to get access to and expect access to more varied products, delivered in much more diverse channels, and potentially even all this direct to me. I think that with the confidence of the acceptance of cloud and the automation that's occurring within the supply chain to automate processes, and certainly the whole pull towards what's created by the consumer and then is being put on the retailers to give a varied amount of broader spectrum of products. And a broader set of offerings to be able to order those products means that we have to be ready to be able to go direct to consumer and to connect closer to that consumer. But the brands are now really a brand of brands. And each of those brands need to speak to different demographics, different segments of the economy, and different channels. So that's what I would say. Robbie, do you think to add there on that one? Yeah, I would say we're getting there, particularly in the flexible packaging industry. Now you've seen the development of digital print technologies to be able to keep up with the small runs and the short order lead times that have fallen with this new technology and with the new internet of things. So it's definitely happening in our end of the supply chain. And it's also happening in the co-man areas where they're having to gear up for their smaller runs, be more efficient, more nimble. And like Mike said, with his company, be able to deliver individual products. So that's what I see. OK, thank you, Rob. Mike, would you like to add on? Sure. I think the, exactly what Rob was talking about, the deliver individual products. I think our industry, the contract packaging industry, is at the forefront in kind of leading the charge because the fact that we are used to being nimble and being creative in supporting customer's needs for products to market. I think we've had a lot of training to say the word of how to help customers turn things fast. And I think the internet continues to drive things faster. And our friends at Amazon continue to do that. So from a contract packaging standpoint, I think we're actually in a leadership role in helping to address this in the industry. Interesting. OK, well, thank you. So the job of a contract package has always been to help our customers remain and stay relevant and competitive. Given this omnitannel revolution, isn't it more difficult today to deliver a competitive end product? I'll start with you again, Mike. And then we'll move to Rob and Jason. Yeah, I think it's a good point, Vicki. It definitely, in the beginning, was definitely a challenge in making the change to be able to react, to be more nimble. And I think as we've done things, the more value we can add to support a customer from the standpoint of what are people willing to pay for as a convenience to have things immediately. And I think that's where our systems, our people are adapting to those changes to make it more effective. And our goal right is to be able to put our customers in a position where their focus is on sales and marketing their brands. And we are the entire back-end arm of their operation of getting that product into their hands, into the customer's hands. Rob? Rob, on helping your customers remain relative and competitive, is it your opinion that that's a little bit more difficult or challenging today than it has been in the past? Yes, absolutely. We've also noticed that the end-use customers, in our case, being the brands, they want to deal with somebody like Mike, so they can do as much for them and be able to go to one person for as much product and as much of the back-end supply chain that they can. So that led us to go into dry food, contract manufacturer, and liquid food contract manufacturing, so we could be more of a one-stop shop for our customers to not only be doing the flexible packaging, but then also the contract packaging services. And I believe that's a trend you'll continue to see grow. So what I'm hearing, and Jason, I think you can speak to this, we're talking about the customer, the CPG, really having the sales and the marketing end of it, has an operations arm here. And as you alluded to earlier in conversation, there's this connectivity that has to happen in the background in real time to be able to make all of this come together successfully and execute accurately and on time, which is important. Can you speak to that for a moment? I think you and I have had some conversations around that in the past, and I think this would be good for this audience. Yeah, Vicky, I think more and more the only sustainable advantage is speed. And speed to launch a product, speed to offering service. So as we talk to the macro trend around differentiation of products and different channels, that variability is really the enemy of mass production. So if you want to, I think it's an incredible opportunity for strategic leading manufacturers and co-packers like Bell Carter and Performance Packaging to find a niche and offer a go-to market that's rapid and that gives the ability in a very entrepreneurial way for a brand to do what they do best, which is branding. And to launch that product through whatever channel that makes sense for that type of product. And technology is a wonderful foundation for doing that. So choosing which technology makes sense and tying them together to offer speed to market for brand vis-a-vis strategic co-packers and co-manufacturers I think is going to grow in trend. And I hear it's difficult because there's so many options you can go into. Dry food blending, do you want to do primary or secondary packaging, do you want to do both? And there's so many different things. And the fact is you probably can't do everything because so choosing what makes sense is very important and that's difficult. Well, thank you. That's certainly very helpful in this conversation. You led in with variability and production. And our next slide will be, that was a good lead-in for our next slide here if I can hear out how to get to the next slide. OK, thank you. There we go. Oh, that's two slides. There we go, right here. All right, let's talk about customization. Chosen by me for me. So today I can order my groceries on mine or via my laptop, my telephone. And I can have them ready to be picked up curbside when I arrive or I can ask for those to be delivered to my house. I can have my sodas or my candies with my face or my name on them if I want. And if I want to have a box of customized healthy snacks or a ready to prepare meal delivered to my house, I can have that too, all delivered in short order. So this is all wonderful for me, the consumer. So this customization is a big change to the customary make-and-full-pallet quantities and shift-full truckloads. This all adds another level of complexity. Not only do I want it now, but I want it special, special to me. So, Mike, I'll start with you. In past conversation with you, I know that you are certainly well-versed and special to me all about the consumer's individual likes. So if you could speak on the operational changes and challenges for this type of distribution, I'll open it up to you, Mike. And then we'll go to Rob and to Jason afterwards. That sounds good. Thanks, Vicki. It's definitely a big change in thinking and in processes, just internally and how you want to definitely run your operations and adapt to the internet of things. Jason touched on it as well. Extremely important from a technology standpoint, when we look at the changes that we're needing internally within our operations to make sure that we're servicing our customers, we utilize new technologies from the standpoint of in all of our three operations. And that technology is what is linking us to our customers every minute of the day. And I think that's where from the old kind of, let's just build a large quantity of an item and truckloads of that product to get away from that and start to think of, hey, everything every day is going to be different and our customers are going to adapt. It becomes even the most important is more important than ever to be working very closely with your customer. And that's what we've kind of done from our supply chain and our production side. We actually, I mean, we're here in our operations listening to us working with our customers. We are on the phone both from the supply chain and a production standpoint with a majority of our customers almost hourly on the way things have to change and adapt. And you truly need to become part of each other's businesses to make it happen. When you want to drive this, hey, it's for me. It was picked for me. It's the items I wanted and I got them today. And our people adapt to changes hourly. So in our production, like Rob had mentioned earlier too, we are changing our production plans almost on an hourly basis. And we can change items that we're running. We can switch back to products in case a customer is seeing things moving quicker. And we truly were picking thousands and thousands of orders every day that are going out to the people on this phone call to ourselves that are basically designed to support an e-commerce pick and pack system for our customers and get that product in the person's hands that they want to deliver it to. So I'm hearing flexibility all over the place there and collaborative connectivity. It seems that this type of connectivity would really drive away from a transactional more to a strategic partnership with your customers. Can you speak to the relationship changes with your client base giving this changing e-commerce world? What's happened, Vicki, is that we've really become, from a relationship, really become part of each other's businesses. I mean, we have customers in here almost every day working on new projects, new changes, brand changes to the product lines, even focusing on regional products that they just want to focus maybe in Northern California, or they want to focus in the Texas region, that type of stuff. And it's truly a link between our two companies. And again, technology, like for Nulogy, is allowing us to create that stronger relationship with our customer. Interesting. Thank you, Mike. Rob, would you like to take it from here? Well, I definitely would agree with Mike. And I want to stress the communication aspect of it. And it's really three-way communication, the communication on the back end that we have to have with our customers, the product group is key to making sure that we're keeping up with the times and keeping up with their needs. But it's also that communication that they're giving to their customer that's saying, this is just for you. This is communicating your special. And a lot of that is done through the packaging, through the digital print, and being able to communicate to that end-use customer. And with that, the benefit to the brands is they're not having as much price pressure put on them, because now they're doing something that is solely for that customer. So they're not having the price wars and things of that nature when they use this type of format. So that seems to be the benefit on their side. Interesting. Jason, anything to add? I would only build on the fact that this mass customization in this economy, I visualize it like everyone was a snowflake. And to deliver that on that snowflake, the holy grail is to deliver that perfect order, the right time, the right price, and so forth. And that requires which Rob and Mike certainly alluded to and spoke about is the transparency and collaboration with the customer to be able to deliver on a consumer order with this e-facilitating agility. That's the name of the game. To do so as a technologist, it's not necessarily what you build, but it's what you can pull on and what you can arrange and componentize within your service offerings to your customer to launch those new services that give them the flexibility to their consumer. And that's not going to change. There's going to be an acceleration, I think, in that area. And it's an incredible opportunity to build relationships. And even what we've seen is some co-packers and co-manufacturers work more upstream with their brand customers to launch those products. Well, thanks again, Jason. That's great. That's also a great lead-in to our next trend that we'll talk about here. And that's certainly speed to market. So we've talked about me, the average consumer, now, buying things via the internet and having them customized to me, but add to that the increasing demand for immediate availability and delivery, both of which contribute to shorter product life cycles and a proliferation of skews and a compressed timeline. It seems all of this change in such short order might be putting companies at a higher risk for a variety of issues. So I'll start with you, Jason. When you hear fresher, better, faster, what does that mean in your world? It reminds me of the Olympics. You know, stronger, higher. But that is what products that can become obsolete. I know that some of the more stringing supply chains that even Mike and Bob serve on the food and beverage and you work within the pharmaceuticals area, the ups and downs of the product is extremely costly. So getting products to market faster and at the right quantity because the lifespan is so much shorter, that really, really matters. That really matters to the brand and hence the shorter run, the runner production runs. And technology enables the elimination in that perfect order of the bullwhip effect so that the communication signal, ideally right from order, right from production delivery is the same. And you can get a pole supply chain in effect there around pushing products. So this is a concept that has been around. But I think the co-packaging manufacturers are playing a more critical role because brands are allowing them to bring the solution and own more of that process. Interesting. All right. Rob, when you hear fresher, better, faster, you know, in addition to sleepless nights, what can you add to this conversation? Yes, it definitely creates a challenge. Not only are they looking for fresher and faster, but they're also looking for healthier and no preservatives and clean label and all of these other things that in a perfect world in Nirvana, you can put them all together and they match. But it's very difficult to seize on each of these points and bring them and put them together. We're doing a lot of things in terms of R&D and back-end development to look at how we can process food faster, how we can use less energy, how we can make these changes faster than the current processing technologies just so that we can keep up with what's being in place. The other issue is the shelf life of the product in the stores and being able to keep that freshness for longer periods of time to avoid that obsolescence that Jason was talking about. So it all creates immense challenges, but it also creates a much stronger supply chain. That's great. Thank you. Mike? I just add a couple more things. I think when I hear fresher, better, and faster, it definitely comes down to communication with our customers. The key concern that both Rob and Jason touched on, the obsolescence and the management of inventories become very critical. And to me, that's where the communication is of utmost importance between us and our customer and managing the effects of that. So definitely inventory and communication to key things. Well, my next question is, many consumer packaged goods companies have manufacturing facilities as well, and this conversation is certainly not foreign. What gives contract packages the upper hand as it relates to speed to market and those challenges we just talked about? I'll start with you, Mike. Vicki, I think the big advantages that we have, again, are that we as contract packages have been used to being a little more flexible and nimble in the handling of products and customers. And CPGs are very good, obviously focused at doing big things very well, but to change and adapt, you're turning big ships in order to address the changes in technology and the Internet. And that's where I think the contract packages come into play is that if things are changing so rapidly, we are able to help CPGs adapt to the new product launches, the new product investigations. We can do things regionally. The CPA, the Contract Packaging Association, right with the links of its membership are able to service customers nationally if needed on certain aspects. And that's one thing that we have done, to me is a big advantage, is we have linked with other members across the country to service a single customer. And I think those types of things in our industry definitely help us to help the CPGs get their products right in the right hands of the people that need it. And to me, that membership is a huge advantage to the contract packaging industry. Anything to add, Rob? I agree. The collaboration is key. And being a member of the industry for a while, you can feel comfortable recommending different members to your clients for the services that they require. And if you're not able to supply them with that product, it's okay. You're still helping them. You're still putting them together with a quality supplier. And so you're creating your value there. And as far as contract packages versus the CPG group, a contract package is by nature, nimble, forced to be able to adapt and to be able to change up product lines on the fly, because that's their business. That's what they do. And I would argue that CPG companies wouldn't be as successful as they are today if it wasn't for contract packages. Thank you. All right, so in this last bit, we've talked about talent and technology and serving nationally. That really takes us into the next trend. And that is globalization, partnering together around the globe, one world, one partner concept. So the world is shrinking. Companies are looking today at where their strategic co-packers and co-manufacturers are and where they'd like them to be around the globe. So panelists, can you share with us, have you branched out globally to serve a customer and if so, what can you share with the audience? Let's start with Rob. We've worked with folks such as Nestle in Europe, headquarters there, as well as Nestle here in the U.S. One of the instances that we had not with Nestle, but a different customer is they were a large frozen pet food company in Europe and they were deciding to establish a market hold in the U.S. And through the U.K. contract packaging association who I had reached out to when I was in the U.K., they actually contacted us because they had our information from the U.K. contract packaging association. So as we work closer and closer with member associations like that, I think you'll see much more of this developing over time. Thank you. Mike, anything to share? Sure. We definitely, Vicki, we have a number of customers who are from Europe as far as headquartered in Europe and or Asia where we are supporting products of theirs for distribution here in the U.S. One of the big advantages that that gives us is being here on the West Coast, we are close proximity to all the ports. So whether it's food products coming from Asia, South America, wherever they may be coming from, we definitely have the opportunity and have linked with these customers from overseas. We are also, on the reverse, we have a number of customers that we work with as well that are producing products here with ingredients from the U.S. and doing distribution to Asia and Europe with their product lines from our locations here on the West Coast. So yes, we have definitely gone after global opportunities. And is that new for you in the last, say, five years? Yes, that would definitely be new for us in the last five years. Okay. And again, the internet of things, you know, is helping to drive that activity. Interesting. And Jason, your company is a globally, a global company. Would you like to add on to this conversation as well? Yes, I think everyone, whether they fit or not, wants to go global. I think that's, and if you're not, then I'm not sure. I think the reach right now through the internet of things and you can get into new markets is tremendous. The challenge obviously to fulfill that desire to go global and to break in those new markets is how do I ensure consistent standard and quality and process with also addressing the unique needs of that specific market. So what we see with a lot of our customers that through technology have been enabled to break those new markets, they can assure their brand customers that consistency, that transparency, that compliance, that quality while getting the speed into that new region with the assuredness and guarantee of outcome that lives up the same standard in maybe a home region or a home area. So I think that the reach is there. How do you get to it? And I think it's more accessible from local players to do. All right. Well, thank you. Well, I'm being told that we have some questions and we want to leave time here for our audience to ask some questions to our panelists. So I'm going to turn it back over to Jim, who will facilitate the Q&A. Okay. Thank you, Vicki, and thank you, panelists, and I apologize again for the audio difficulty at the beginning, but I think it went pretty smoothly once we got everybody on the line. So again, please do type any questions you have and the questions field on your screen and we will get to them as quickly as possible. So one question that I'd like to throw out there is you talked about, I think maybe it was Jason that talked about speed to market is the only sustainable advantage. Jason, can you or the other panels talk about, is there ever a time in contract packaging when speed could be a bad thing, too much speed? Can you talk about that a little bit? I can, or Rob, do you want to take it first? Sure. Yeah, this is Rob. I'll take it. Yeah, you have to be disciplined in what you're doing and you can't let speed to market cause you to shortcut any of the necessary steps that you need to make. And one of the products that we can make is shelf-stable baby food. While you're putting a baby food out there in the marketplace, you better make sure you've got all your processing parameters and all of your ducts in a row before that product gets onto that store shelf. So the only caution I would give on the speed to market and moving too fast is just making sure that as you're doing it, you're checking off all of the key components and everything you need to do for food and product safety. Yeah, Jim, this is Mike. I would definitely agree with Rob that you definitely need to make sure you're not missing things as you go through it. We actually work with Checklist internally here to make sure that from a speed standpoint that we are not missing things when we're doing new product introductions with our customers. And the Food Safety Modernization Act, FISMA, is driving a lot of that as well from the standpoint of expectations if you're in the food industry of the quality and the performance of suppliers where ingredients are coming from. Definitely becoming more and more important every year as we go forward. So you definitely have to make sure that you're checking along the way. Yeah. Speed kills, right? We all grew up to hear about speed killing and it's good in battle. It can kill competition, but I'll show you if it's managed and you're not able to be disciplined and also responsive. From a systems perspective, we roll out updates to, for example, with Mike equipping his operations on a weekly basis. So being able to adopt new technologies, not just driving new things, but being able to pull and adopt new workflows. So it's an awesome essence of a permanent enterprise platform and the evolution to a heterogeneous distributed system that continues evolving. And that evolution is an responsiveness, I think, for the bill. It's going to be an important one to win in the future. Okay. Thank you. A follow-up question on speed to market. How has packaging changed as speed to market has gained traction? Cold packs are massive. Is that a problem politically, possibly going forward in the future? This is Rob. I'm not sure about the part about the cold packs being large, but I can't say that, you know, as far as packaging is concerned, it does become very challenging as you condense lead times and trying to push everything through. It can really stress the production environment in printing. A lot of times rushing through on print jobs, that's when mistakes happen, that's when you have the characters missing or whatever it may be, that's an issue. So I think it's just kind of reiterating what I mentioned in my last statement and addressing it to packaging. It's just as important or even more important to make sure you're checking off the list and got everything right before you get to production and go. Any other thoughts on that? Okay, well, hearing none, let's move on to another question. The three of you talked quite a bit about, in one form or another, about e-commerce. Given the need to be fast and to be flexible and to be able to change on a dime, so to speak, if there was one question that you think potential users of your service should be asking, contract packaging, as it relates to e-commerce and packaging, what would it be? This is my gym. I would say the one question I would be asking would be, show me your systems, show me your communication systems and processes internally for managing e-commerce from my customer's orders to the fulfillment. That would be, I know it's a long question, but that's my one question. This is Rob. I would definitely echo that. Okay. Anything further there? All right, thank you. Next question. I think you touched on it a little bit during the presentation. You talked about strategic, and I'm not sure if tactical was also used in there in terms of uses for contract packaging. Rob, I'll start with you. Is there any trend that you're seeing toward more strategic use of contract packaging services versus tactical, and could you give a brief example of both uses? Well, the strategic, I think it depends on the end-use customer. I think with the CPGs and the multinationals, strategic is much more of a big part of what they're looking at doing, and I think Jason can probably talk more to this, too. But they want the least amount of noise in the manufacturing process and their supply chain. So if you keep the noise out, that means everything's running smooth, and for them to be able to do that, they look at those partners that can provide all of the services that they need or multiple products so that they know they can rely on that partner to produce X amount of different products for them, and they'll continue to feed them as long as that partner performs in a strategic way. I think you get more tactical when you're looking at the smaller companies that are looking at doing contract manufacturing and starting a new product or doing this or that. That would be a tactical situation there. I think that's kind of how I would break them apart. I think we got time for one more question here. Again, I think maybe we hit on this from time to time over the hour, but when we talk about the make versus buy decision, is there anything that has changed over the last year or two that CPG companies on the line would need to know in making the make versus buy determination? Anything trending there? Go ahead, Jason. One of the topics is speed. What can I get faster markets to test and prototype first? Is it something that is a new product entry altogether? Is it doing the same thing in a new geography, which is totally different from creating category or product, maybe in a current geography or demographic? Those are considerations. If I can get the market faster and create a new product category with a strategic partner that's highly valuable, and especially if I can get some shared resources off that, an experience that is from that strategic supplier, so those are all considerations for when to buy out sources. Okay, Mike or Rob? I would say this, Mike. I would say one of the things that I think the CPG that are on the phone should know is that, in the last two years, the contract packaging industry and the contract packages out there have definitely made huge strides forward in building capabilities and becoming that end-to-end resource for producing products. And I think based on food safety and all the regulations and the expectations that are out there, I think that if you haven't talked to a contract package during the last few years, you should definitely start talking to it because you'll find that the advances made in our industry are huge. So it would challenge people to contact people. Okay. Great information, panelists, and I want to close the hour with one question opposed to Vicki as president of the CPA. Where can people go to get a directory of contract packages and engage with them? There is a directory that's open to anyone, to the public, and it is on the contract packaging association website listed on the screen here, www.contractpackaging.org. You can sort by Little Cal. You can sort by company name. Our associate members are part of that sort criteria. There is also a request for bid area, and you can list a project or a question, and it would go out to all of our members. So you could be sure to receive back some good feedback in your inbox from utilizing that tool. Okay. Great options there, and thank you very much, panelists. But Rob and Mike and Jason, tremendous information, and I think it will be very valuable to those on the line and those who will access this information afterwards. Vicki, I thank you for moderating. Great job. And just a quick housekeeping note. This webinar was recorded, so the recording will be available afterwards for CPA members. It will be on www.contractpackaging.org. For IOPP members, if you get the webinar on demand benefit, you'll be able to access this off of IOPP.org. So this concludes our webinar, and we do have another webinar at IOPP coming up in two weeks from today, actually. January 31st at 10 a.m. Central. Dr. Johannes Burtmayer, Vice President of Sustainability and Food Safety at the World Packaging Organization will be presenting on food losses and food waste, the role of packaging. So look for your details in your inbox if you haven't seen it already, or check back on IOPP.org. It's certainly everybody on the line we encourage you to attend. So once again, thanks for attending today's webinar presentation, and have a great day, everyone. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you.