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work in hotel bars and banquet departments, lifting beer kegs, boxes of beef, and beverages to refill the vending machine, and you can get an idea of how valuable the Lift 'n Buddy is in this setting alone. According to Aaron Lamb, the company's president and founder, the ongoing improvement in worker safety standards, especially in Canada and the EU, and to a lesser extent in the U.S., are helping drive interest in the product, which can reduce worker injuries and a company's liability.
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Community Psion's commitment to giving custom- ers a solution that protects their investment earns them a spot on this year's list. The com- pany's Omnii handheld products, which can be configured for a variety of users and environ- ments, are also highly cost effective due to their modular design and use of shared components. The Omnii platform allows com- panies to save up to 30 percent in hardware costs over the life of the product, according to Psion. But, it's Psion's IngenuityWorking.com Web site that really
Psion Finds Value in Modularity,
establishes the company as a logistics innovator. "IW is an open community, an open source environment," says Mike
Wills, Psion's vice president, North America. The Web site has been up and running for just over 2 years and has attracted over 18,000 unique subscribers. It's a community of users, developers, and others who exchange ideas and suggestions, which ultimately make for a better prod- uct. "We're stronger because of the open commitment to the conversation
flow and the input of ideas because of all the submittals, all the conver- sations, and all the strings," says Wills. "There's typically a diamond in there somewhere."
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Cheers to AstraPouch for an Alternative to Wine and
Spirits Bottles While consumers took years to adjust to the Stelvin screw cap on wine bottles, the transition to alternative packaging seems to be going a little faster. Undoubtedly, the wider acceptance of more environmentally friendly packaging has something to do with it. The AstraPouch was first developed and launched in South Africa in 2008, but the company is growing quickly in the U.S. Not only is the pouch a superior way to maintain freshness, it's great for shippers too. One truckload of empty AstraPouch pack- ages is equal to 14 truckloads of empty glass bottles. ◆
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