Part One: Read to the bottom of this page, then stop until your teacher tells you to turn the page.     Fred Pasquale had numbers whirling around his head. He had a problem to solve, and needed to figure it out fast.   Click on icon above to download a high resolution file of this page that you can view and print using Adobe Acrobat Reader software. If you do not have this free software, download it from the Adobe site.   Fred Pasquale was the Transportation Manager for Port Townsend Paper Corporation. That meant he was responsible for getting supplies in and finished paper products out of the paper mill his company owned and operated in Port Townsend, Washington.   The Port Townsend Paper Corporation’s mill had been built in 1918, and was designed to ship most of its products by railcar and barge to customers within the United States. During the last 15 years, however, things had changed. For one thing, the company’s customer base had changed dramatically. Now, a full 60% of its products were shipped to Asia. With the change in customers, the railroad had been removed. Thus, in terms of shipping finished products out of the mill, Fred had two choices: (1) He could load his product barges and have it sent to Seattle to be put into cargo containers and then shipped to Asia. (2) Or, he could have cargo containers filled at the mill, trucked to Seattle, and then shipped.   But shipping wasn’t Fred’s problem right now. Storage was. Except that storage affected shipping. As the mill had been modernized, its production capabilities had increased dramatically, but its storage hadn’t. The mill could produce either 500 metric tons (MT) of kraft paper (for paper bags) or 1,000 metric tons (MT) of kraft linerboard (for boxes) each day. Usually, for efficiency, the mill would produce paper for seven days and then linerboard for seven days.   But, the mill only had storage space for 1,000 MT. So, on weeks when the mill was producing linerboard, the mill ran out of storage quickly. And that meant that Fred had to figure out how to ship more linerboard out of the mill more quickly.   Stop here until your teacher tells you to turn the page.   Click to continue previewing the student version on screen.   Return to Case Studies Archives. Home Journey Log Trade Topics People Profiles Index Ask the Eagle