Digital Transformation & ERP Integration at St.John Packaging

Founded in 1954 by René J. Leclair, St. John Packaging is a vertically integrated manufacturer of flexible packaging products for leading food and consumer products companies.

The company plays an essential role in the food and personal care supply chains, helping its customers to package, protect, preserve and sell their products. Their graphic services and print quality enable customers to offer eye-catching graphics for their products in-store.

Products and services offered

• Flexible packaging for food and personal care products
• Film extrusion
• Printing on rolls
• Production of bags on pins or pouches with various formats and functionalities (e.g. velcro, gusset, zipper)

Company size

• More than 900 employees
• 2 plants in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu (Saint-Luc, Saint-Jean)
• 1 in Montreal
• 1 in Greensboro, USA
• 1 in China
• 2 in Vietnam
• 2 in Mexico
• 1 in United Kingdom

Year of foundation

1954

In the first quarter of 2017, St. John Packaging undertook the implementation of a new ERP, EFI Radius, in all their plants spread around the world. The plan was to integrate their various plants over the course of 2020 and beyond.

Each plant would have its own ERP instance and database, requiring extensive manual work to transfer data between systems.

The in-house application used to initially create orders and products was developed in VB and did not allow for interconnectivity with the EFI Radius ERP. The process of information exchange was mainly done through printing and paper exchanges between different departments.

To centralize information on products and orders, St. John Packaging wanted to enable its employees to manage the creation and modification of data across multiple sites simultaneously.

Advantages of the proposed solution

• Acceleration of duplication between companies
• Comparison of items available across multiple sites
• Creation of orders and production slips distributed across multiple sites

• Development of a solution to centralize product and order management
• Integration of EFI Radius ERP
• Support and ongoing training of teams

A 100% improvement in processing time for managing a new item was noted. It is now twice as fast to process a new item, which also allows for easier management of multiple external processes related to order intake and job assignment.

Advantages of the Implemented Solution

• Significant time and cost savings
• Better operational management fluidity