Living and Working Together, Globally and Locally
One of the best parts about working at EPE is the multi-cultural experience that you have every day. Imagine waking up in the morning and talking to a customer in Prague about a new package design, while learning at the same time the people in the Czech Republic eat a very sweet porridge for breakfast. Then follow that up with a quick chat after lunch with a client from San Paulo, Brazil to ensure your order is on schedule, while learning Brazilians have lunch as their biggest meal of the day. Cumulate your day with late night calls with EPE colleagues from Shanghai and Singapore, where you find out they’re just waking up and starting their mornings with tropical fruit and toast. When working with great people all over the world in a global company like EPE, you get to experience the great things that multiple cultures offer every day.
At EPE, our people have those days all the time. For many EPE employees, it’s known as a Tuesday, or Friday, or even a Sunday for those with deadlines to meet. It makes for a long day, but it allows for one to keep a global perspective of the business world we work in. More importantly, it provides perspective of the world we live in, and with whom. No single country owns the market on great ideas and best practices. By listening and learning from everyone we talk to everyday, we are exposed to new ways of thinking that make us better as a company, and better as individuals.
Besides knowing what the world has for breakfast and lunch, working on a global scale allows for synergies to occur that make EPE stronger collectively. The old adage of 1+1=3 is proven every day at EPE when we leverage the collective strength of our network and the combined intelligence from different people, countries, and cultures. The benefits are real and evident on a daily basis. Start with a design idea in Atlanta at 7:00am, then hand off the design for review by the designers in Los Angeles, who then send it off to Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Thailand for further refinement and production input. Twenty-four hours later, what began as a simple design concept in our Atlanta facility has transformed into a collaborative effort of multiple designers around the world, reviewed by multiple production sites throughout multiple countries, and ends up as the best possible solution for our customers. Pretty neat process, huh? See why globally and locally works?
Now, if 1+1=3, imagine the synergies we benefit from when we keep adding exponential people with different viewpoints, cultural ideas, and local experience. Supporting our customers on a worldwide basis means being able to provide seamless global support and service, and being able to communicate effectively across multiple countries and languages. EPE’s global network of design and manufacturing sites allows us to provide our customers with leveraged products, services, and cost benefits. Our strength is operating on a worldwide scale with local understanding.
Global learning comes in many forms. I get to travel frequently and have been extremely fortunate to be able to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in many countries around the world. When people ask me, “Where’s the best Chinese food?”, I always answer tongue-in-cheek with, “China.” Same goes for when they ask me about sushi, which I answer more specifically with, “The 6th floor sushi shop at Tokyo Station in Tokyo”. Next time you’re in Tokyo and near the Tokyo Station, go find it – it’s the best!
EPE’s global network is comprised of over sixty locations in fourteen countries. This allows EPE to leverage our global learning and understanding to provide our customers with the best possible design, continuity of service, and support all around the world.
And we know the best places to eat – what else could you want?
