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This recession has been the longest and the deepest since the great depression and New
Mexico’s been hit hard. But our state’s resilience has been showing in our small businesses
and our entrepreneurs. The recovery act and other federal programs have helped to cushion
the blow and the economy is starting to turn around. As our small businesses grow, we need
to make sure that we’re competitive in the global economy. The U.S. Department of Commerce
has a program to help manufacturers become more efficient called the Manufacturing Extension
Partnership or MEP. Desert Paper, a company in Albuquerque is taking advantage of the
MEP program to improve their bottom line. My name is Ella Leeper and I’m the owner
of Desert Paper and Envelope Company . We’re an envelope manufacturing company and the
only envelope manufacturer in the state of New Mexico. We knew we needed to seek some
improvements in reduction of waste and on time delivery. So, learning about those different
processes I learned about lean manufacturing. Part of our core business is helping them
to improve their efficiency, their effectiveness to introduce new products, to improve their
quality systems. Just whatever the small or medium manufacturer needs to be more profitable
and to grow. They really address all of your processes
and procedures, and it’s identifying every piece of waste that happens in those procedures
and documenting all of that. So that it’s repetitive, so that you can be standardized
and consistent in your processes. So we’re trying to help the small entrepreneur
who has a great idea, knows how to make one, but doesn’t know how to manufacture a thousand
or ten thousand. So we’re trying to teach them how to do that.
We’re one of the fastest in the industry in turn times. We have several customers who
have sensitive material that we can make, print and envelope in a day. That didn’t
used to be very possible. It would upset the apple cart if we did it. Now the team just
takes it and puts it into the process and it doesn’t seem like this putting out a
fire. That’s not something we say around here very much.
Companies that have improved their efficiency through MEP say that it’s a well kept secret.
Well we’re letting the cat out of the bag. You can find out more about MEP online at
http://www.newmexicomep.org