January 22, 2026
Are You Making Informed Decisions in an Uncertain Market?
“Producers are squeezed from both sides.” That’s how Derek Mahlburg, Director North American Paper & Packaging at Fastmarkets, sees corrugated manufacturers. Data shows that both kraftliner prices and average production costs increased through late 2024 and into 2025. Indeed, squeezed from both sides. (Source: Fastmarkets PPI Pulp & Paper Week, North American Containerboard Outlook 2025 – fastmarkets.com) Natural gas, electricity, and labor costs are keeping margins tight, while tariff uncertainty and uneven market recovery add more complexity. Manufacturers need complete operational visibility to control what they can. That’s how you make certainty from uncertainty.Connected Operations: Turning Uncertainty into Certainty
At ePS (eProductivity Software), we’ve spent over 30 years developing software purpose-built for the packaging industry. From ERP, to MES and corrugator control, our solutions allow manufacturers to connect their entire operation with automation and real-time data. With accurate visibility into material usage, job costing, and machine uptime, plant managers can make decisions based on facts. Schedulers can adjust jobs based on priority and resource availability. Estimators work with confidence on actual job performance and margins. That’s how corrugated manufacturers turn uncertainty into measurable performance and release the pressure from “both sides.”Tackling the Labor Challenge with Best Practice Process Control
On top of cost and market volatility, corrugated manufacturers face another growing pressure: an aging workforce and a shortage of skilled operators. When experienced employees leave, much of their process knowledge leaves with them. Best practice process control helps close that gap by embedding operational expertise and ePS’ 30 years of experience in the industry directly into the system. With recipe and setpoint automation, parameters like temperature, glue, steam, and tension remain consistent across every shift. Closed-loop recipe optimization continuously adjusts based on board performance. The result is consistent quality, reduced waste, and faster training for new operators.Controlling What You Can: Turning Pressure into Performance
There will always be forces outside your control. Energy prices, raw material costs and quality, geopolitical shifts, tariffs, or even your most experienced operators moving on. But what happens inside your factory is entirely yours to control. You can control and track each roll of paper, the speed of your corrugator, what criteria you use to schedule jobs, and what data you use to estimate and quote. This need for complete operational visibility and control is echoed by Craig Tait, Chief Product Officer at ePS (eProductivity Software). He believes that data-driven connectivity is what separates resilient manufacturers from reactive ones: “The greatest risk in manufacturing today is operating blind. In volatile markets, success belongs to those who can see, understand, and act in real time. A connected operation removes departmental silos — aligning data, people, and processes into one performance-driven ecosystem. This clarity empowers leaders to respond faster to change, optimize performance across every function, and deliver consistent product quality on every shift, every machine, and every site.” You control the data, and that’s what protects you from uncertainty. The pressure from “both sides” doesn’t disappear, but with real-time visibility and intelligent automation, you have the insight to overcome it every time. It’s why the world’s leading packaging manufacturers choose ePS.
