Alan Crane: A Remembrance

At the suggestion of Crane Carton’s quality assurance manager and campaigning by several on the management team, Crane agreed to set up classrooms for staff training. He enlisted faculty from DePaul University to teach English, math and computer skills; vendors came in to train on equipment maintenance; and Alan himself taught the staff about finance—and he would literally walk through the company’s P&L line by line. "'What good is a profit-sharing plan if you’re not going to share the P&L?'" Bruce recalled his father saying. "He’d get up there and talk about how things like spoilage and downtime affected profits, how money falls down to the bottom line, and he’d seek input about equipment investments. Dad also believed managers were there to support employees, so if we were teaching a course to the third shift, we did so during the third shift, like at 2 a.m.”