IPS Adhesives Establishes Center of Excellence in Durham NC

New scalable processes translates into quicker response and enhanced support for customers

DURHAM, NC – IPS Adhesives, provider of premium quality adhesives, has established a manufacturing Center of Excellence in their North Carolina, ISO 9001:2015 Certified facility. It coincides with recent investments in production, with additional ones planned or already in progress, as well as centralizing the R&D and customer service activities for North America at the Durham facility.

The inception of the Center of Excellence was inspired by IPS Adhesives’ drive for continuous improvement to serve and support customers through LEAN and innovative practices. In addition to enhancing on-time delivery, customers should see faster response times to demand through new, more agile processes. Part of this includes an established standard stocking of 165 of their best-selling colors with the ability to produce another 100+ colors quickly made to order.

Creating the Center of Excellence also included several changes following the Continuous Improvement process that added more production cells and increased output. It also involved the implementation of a new QC tinting/testing lab dedicated to surfacing adhesives and hosting the latest color-matching and verification technology.

With the upgrades, this will complete the transition of the manufacturing of surfacing adhesives under the Integra Adhesives brand from Abbotsford, Canada, to Durham, resulting in production and customer support teams being geographically closer to the majority of the market, thereby boosting service.

“Our goals for the Center of Excellence is to provide Quick Response to our customers, provide even higher quality product in more colors that you can’t get anywhere else, and continue to drive global scalability through new and innovative ways, focused on always improving our performance,” said Eric Greene, VP Lean Transformation at IPS Adhesives. He added, “The CoE will drive IPS Adhesives’ mission to be one of the best in the world at the make-tint-fill process for surfacing adhesives; to be better and faster than the competition while creating world class products that are the most reliable on the market.”