URS Printers, Inc.

Dear Dr. Goldratt,

I am with URS Printers, Inc. in Middletown, Ohio in the USA. We are a $4.3 million printing company and have operated since 1968.

My life was changed in 1989 when I first read your book The Goal. My younger brother "lent" me his copy to read. He works at General Electric where it was required reading.

He told me that I would enjoy reading it. I got it on Friday and did not accomplish much that weekend. I read it 3 times. Our company had recently undergone a number of internal and external changes. Our changes reflected very similarly to your book.

You were able to articulate what we had been going through and lead us to what we needed to do. We abandoned job costing, started looking for bottlenecks and learned how to elevate, exploit and subordinate other operations. My father who was retired thought I was crazy. He could not understand this new way of thinking and how it was okay not run all operations to the local efficiencies.

We eventually changed our operation and specialized into our current field. We have streamlined our operation and changed most of our operation to your new process based on our findings.

I have given over 50 copies of The Goal to clients, family and friends. We had learned again to trust our workforce and radically changed our daily work ethics. We evaluate our workforce every year and grade them on Ownership, Passion/Energy, Team Player, Self-Confidence, Integrity, Communication, Empowerment, Development Skills & Job Skills.

I have read The Goal 30-40 times, I have read The Race, Theory of Constraints, It's Not Luck and Critical Chain.

When the constraint became sales, I read It's Not Luck and I have used a presentation designed from the book many times to present to prospective clients. It has never failed to earn us the business.

Recently I "threw" a constraint at our manufacturing group. I challenged them to eliminate "aerosol cans".

We used 4 products.

• Anti-Static - Used to eliminate static in our flexo web operation.
• Silicone - Used to coat the trimmer to allow paper to slide easily.
• InkReadi - A product used to keep printing inks from drying.
• Adhesive - Used to mount an acetate sheet to a cylinder.

We eliminated the use of anti-static by mounting a piece of fabric softener sheets which after they come in contact with our substrate, the static is eliminated.

Next we stopped using the silicone spray by applying car wax to the steel surface and that worked much better than the spray.

After two successes we were faced with the remaining two issues. We had achieved 50% success and were told by the production team that we could NOT eliminate the other products.

After a week of using less InkReadi, I was informed that either we had to purchase InkReadi or find an ink that "remained moist in the press and would dry instantly on the paper." That was not an easy task. However after a short time I called several ink companies and proposed that dilemma to them. I received an ink sample from a current supplier. The product not only achieved our expectations, but was better. We had hoped to be able to leave the product in the press for 1 week and it has actually lasted 3 weeks. It also costs 20% less money and has much less waste.

The adhesive spray was deemed impossible to eliminate. We had been successful for 75%. I was told that 3 out of 4 was a great achievement. I was determined to "constrain" the team. We after 4 weeks of determination for all team members had found a product to eliminate the last spray bottle. We had found an adhesive tape (which we had in our plant and had been using for another task) to outperform the prior product.

We have used your theories throughout our company and I think you have brought much success to our company and my life.

Greg Nenni
URS Printers, Inc.
Middletown, Ohio
Greg@URSNet.com