Interactive Session: management

El-alamein for printing and packaging goes digital

Founded in 1921, El-Alamein is one of the leading companies in the Middle East in the printing and packaging industry. With head-quarters (HQ) located in Alexandria, El-Alamein occupies an area of 40,000 square meters and employs more than 700 employees. El-Alamein has managed to obtain international quality certificates including: ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO OHSAS 18001, and BRC/IOP. The company has two main Strategic Business Units (SBUs): offset factory as well as a flexible factory.

“Since 1921, El-Alamein Co. led the revolution of the Printing and Packaging industry in Egypt. El-Alamein is the approved supplier to the biggest international companies in the fast food industry. The company produces paper cups for cold and hot drinks as well as ice-cream packages with their different shapes and sizes. The company also produces eight-cornered carton boxes to pack sandwiches and burgers, in addition to different shapes and sizes of fried potatoes boxes. The company produces wrapping paper for sandwiches and fast food, and produces printed multi-layered paper bags by using automatic heat sealing for the bottom and side-seams.”

The company faces many challenges: there isn't a reliable infrastructure, network, servers, storage or PCs; there isn't an IT/IS department in the organization chart; competitors have taken serious steps in becoming digitally enabled, and information loss has taken many shapes for example lost orders, inaccurate inventory, and lack of integration between functional departments.

Until June 2006 the company had never had an IT department and relied on separate PCs with end-user designed excel sheets to facilitate the work duties. The company’s CEO decided to go digital from July 2006 and the company had to establish several infrastructural components