Barry-Wehmiller has acquired almost 130 companies around the world.
We have more than 12,000 team members in 28 countries. And from Green Bay, Wisconsin to Lucca, Italy, we continually see that people are just people. They’re all in search of the same thing: They want to know that who they are and what they do matter.
Incidentally, Green Bay and Lucca are two important cities for Barry-Wehmiller. Green Bay is the international headquarters for the BW Converting Solutions platform of companies and the birthplace of Paper Converting Machine Company (PCMC). Lucca is the heart of PCMC’s operations in the Eastern Hemisphere.
BW Converting Solutions is a strategic alliance of resources and services that brings together six Barry-Wehmiller companies — PCMC, Winkler + Dünnebier (W+D), STAX Technologies, Baldwin Technology Co., Hudson-Sharp, and Northern Engraving and Machine. These industry leaders offer trusted brands and innovative technologies in the design, manufacture, and service of high-performance converting and packaging machinery for the tissue, nonwovens, hygiene, bag-converting, mailing and printing industries.
Arianna Fazzi has been working at the BW Converting Solutions site in Lucca for three years now. She started as an intern for PCMC, then accepted a position in reception and is now part of the BW Converting Solutions Marketing Communications team.
For Arianna, her time working at our Lucca facility has been special because of the people.
“It's kind of a big family,” Arianna said. “We know each other. When we finish work, we go sometimes to have an aperitif. We have dinner together.”
And she said that sense of family is representative of the Barry-Wehmiller culture.
“If I can go to work in that friendly environment, it's thanks to that, that I can have good relationships there,” Arianna said. “I really feel appreciated when I'm there. And it reflects also on my personal life because I can go back home feeling grateful for what I've done during the day and so, (then) I can spend a great time with my family.”
Arianna said that sense of family also extends to PCMC’s and BW Converting’s customers.
“A customer should care about purchasing from us because when they come into in contact with a Barry-Wehmiller company, they found a supplier that treats them like a family member because suppliers are people too,” she said. “We have in our DNA that thing to care for the other first. So, we have this culture of service and we try to give them the best service possible. We try to care for them from their first visit to our facility, to the aftermarket service.”
In 2022, Arianna had the opportunity to visit a sister Barry-Wehmiller company, BW Papersystems, at their facility in Phillips, WI. She was invited as a group of people from across the greater BW organization to evaluate and reimagine how we approach our recognition programs.
Finding ways to hold up the good in our organization, celebrate and thank our people is just one of the ways we try to let them know that they matter.
“To me, recognition is really important,” Arianna said. “I’ve received some recognition in the past and I felt speechless, because I didn't imagine that I really counted like that, that people thought that of me. I'm kind of a not so self-confident person, and those recognitions really helped me a lot to gain self-confidence.”
BW CEO Bob Chapman challenged the group at the beginning of the conference: How do you create a consistent practice of recognizing the goodness in our people and say “thank you” in timely and appropriate ways?
Arianna and the other members of the group took the challenge very seriously – in the spirit of continuous improvement – to reevaluate our recognition programs to make sure they still have the same impact as before, and how we can do even better.
“I met a group of people that from the first time that I saw them remotely, but also here for the first time in person, they make made me feels like part of a big family,” Arianna said of the experience. “They are so friendly, always smiling, it's really incredible.”
The group came out of Phillips with the framework for a brand-new recognition program within Barry-Wehmiller – the SHINE program – that is currently being tested in different parts of our organization before greater roll-out.
“My hope after this conference is to make people understand the power of recognition,” Arianna said. “The power of our culture for people, and to really start to implement programs every day -- recognition, peer-to-peer recognition, but to have more recognition throughout our companies. So, this is really my hope for the future.”
Better Work. Better World. is a video series designed to shine a
light on team members throughout the global Barry-Wehmiller
organization. Watch the video through the link above to learn more