Plasti-Line Corp., a major thermoformer of indoor and outdoor signs, is moving the management staff of its Florence, Ky., menu-board-making division to its Knoxville, Tenn., corporate headquarters. Among those not making the trek south is R. Richard Jordan, American Sign & Marketing Division president. Jordan joined Plasti-Line's competitor, LSI Industries, nearby in Blue Ash, Ohio, to start his own image-making division - LSI Images Inc. - in the highly competitive fast-food signage industry.
Jordan, American Sign's president for more than five years, said his new enterprise will produce lighting, interior design and graphics.
American Sign, with annual sales of about $21 million, thermoforms faces for indoor and outdoor menu signs for eight of America's 10 largest fast-food franchisers, said Plasti-Line President James Banfield. None of American Sign's 150 manufacturing employees remaining in Florence will be affected by the move.
Thirty to 40 financial and customer service employees of its American Sign office will move by June, said Plasti-Line spokesman Mark Deuschel.
Jordan's replacement, Wayne Morris, said, ``American Sign & Marketing is now in a position for major growth in sales and profit, something we had not seen ... over the last few years.''
Plasti-Line produces all dealership signs for General Motors Corp., and many for Toyota, Nissan, PepsiCo Inc. and others at its plants outside Knoxville and in Fontana, Calif.
Among its better-known campaigns was the entire signage changeover made necessary when Japanese carmaker Datsun became Nissan in the early 1980s.
Plasti-Line reported 1993 sales of $93 million. Another of the firm's divisions, Design Performance Group in Covington, Ky., performs consumer research, concept design and promotional work for point-of-sale campaigns in fast-food restaurants, banks and auto parts stores.
It hired the Nashville office of Arthur Anderson Consulting more than a year ago to streamline the entire company's responsiveness to customers, Banfield said. Out of that came the ``Hamlet Project,'' in which Plasti-Line sought to determine whether it needed ``to be or not to be,'' according to the company's announcement.
It decided ``to be'' and invested $5 million in new computers, training and ``infrastructure changes to improve the re-engineered environment.''
