Century Printing & Packaging Team Profile: Cindy Julian

Century Printing & Packaging Team Members
Cindy Julian has been working as a rewinder at Century Printing and Packaging for 17 years. She is one of the most tenured employees.  We sat down with the Greenville native and long-time Greer resident to talk about her role in the company and the changes she’s seen over the years.

Tell us about your role at Century Printing and Packaging? I am a rewinder. I take the rolls that come off the press and rewind the labels on them down to the size the customer wants. Then I inspect the rolls to make sure the labels are in the direction the customer wants. When the presses are running and something is flagged we stop them and take those out and then start it over.  

So you are essentially quality and control? Yes, that’s what I’ve done all my life.  I started doing this with the looms in a cotton mill after I graduated high school and then worked at Kemet electronics in the same role with capacitors.  

Our job is to make sure the labels on the press are exactly what the customer has ordered.  We catch tears, faults, or mistakes before the labels are shipped to our customers. Quality is critical to our company because if we don’t get it right customers aren’t going to want to pay for something that isn’t right and they won’t return. For example, in the job I’m working on today I’ve got 77 rolls with 2,000 labels per roll, and then I have other jobs I’m doing in between. We have to multi-task between the printers, jobs, and rewinders. I would say I do an average of 50,000 labels a day.

You have really been able to be part of Century’s growth over the years, haven’t you? When I started 17 years ago we had two tabletop rewinders and two old presses. Now we have four great presses, a digital press with one tabletop rewinder, two upright rewinders, and two fan-fold machines. When I started we literally did fan-folding by hand. Technology has really helped us increase production and picked up the speed of things. We are putting out more than I ever remember during my time here and it’s quality work.   We still have a tabletop rewinder but we use it for smaller jobs like tiny rolls which is hard to do on an upright. Now with the digital press when they take those rolls there may be four different jobs on one roll and you have to run them, slit it and flip it so you get it in the right direction which is easier to do on the tabletop because on the upright you have to web it up.  

So what kind of numbers are we talking about in terms of a typical day for you? It varies, but it could be over a hundred rolls a day, it just depends on the size and the size of the order. We are working on multiple jobs at the same time. You could have 10,000, one-inch labels on a roll and you may do ten rolls, or you could do larger labels with 200 on the roll. It really depends on the number of labels than it does the rolls.  

Can you describe the culture of your role and the company? You really have to be self-motivated to be a rewinder.  No one is riding your back or trying to micromanage you. You are expected to know your job and do it, but you control your day based on the production schedule and customer orders.  There is a greater sense of team. Like any job, we can ruffle each other’s feathers from time to time, but we are more like family, you disagree, work it out and move on. Even though we are all working in different areas and roles we communicate and work together. I’m one of the longest to be here and that makes me really proud and the fact that they’ve put up with me for this long.

Century was an “essential business” at the height of Covid, what was that like? I never really felt it because I got up every day and came to work, nothing changed except for wearing a mask and wiping everything down all the time. We were working and yet it was hard to see how so many others lost their jobs or were laid off.  I was very grateful our company kept going.  

Cindy, why would you tell someone to choose Century over other printing and packaging companies? I would say because we are loyal to our customers, we offer competitive prices on high-quality work, and we exceed customer expectations.  And if something slips through the cracks we go back and make it right. We make good on our word to our customers.

Tell us about your family and what you enjoy doing when you are not working.I’ve been married for 21 years and between us, we have four adult children and 9 grandchildren, four girls and five boys.  We love to hang out at the pool and play with our grandkids. We have a new baby in our house, a Miniature Pinscher puppy who keeps us busy.  

At Century Printing and Packaging we have a long line of tenured employees who make up our team.  We are proud of their work, spirit, and the contribution they make to our quality of work and production. All of them work hard to fulfill customers’ orders and produce high-quality work.  

Ben Waldrop, President  Century Printing and Packaging, Inc. Greer, SC 29651 Phone: 800.344.7509