
Morale Boosters
by James Dudlicek
For company on the rebound, plant improvements show
Farmland means business.
New processing infusion system. New ammonia compressors. New boilers. State-of-the-art systems control. New box formers. New case packers. New robotic palletizers.
It reads like a dairy processor’s wish list, and
it’s all happening at Farmland Dairies’ plant in Wallington,
N.J.
And they’re welcome changes, to be sure,
especially after several years of neglect and the watchful eye of
bankruptcy court forced on Farmland by the financial scandal of Italian
dairy giant Parmalat, its former owner.
“During the time of Parmalat, very little was
invested in this facility, so we have a lot of catch-up to do,” says
Mike Pedersen, executive vice president of operations.
Tim Barber, VP of operations, elaborates: “When
we came out of bankruptcy, one of the main concerns the investors had was
the infrastructure of the facility. It’s better, but it’s
nowhere near where we want it to be, and there’s still a lot of time
to get it done. If you come back in six months, it won’t look like
the same facility.”
Celebrating a year out of bankruptcy, Farmland is
making changes as quickly as possible.
“During the bankruptcy, there wasn’t a
full determination that we were going to come out, so the money we spent
was really for Scotch tape and glue,” says Marty Margherio, president
and chief executive officer. “Because we’ve been operating at
plan and better, [board members] allowed us to double up on our capital
expenditures for one year. Our lenders gave us the ability to really get
back to being a force in the dairy business, and that helps us a great
deal, because it will help us get to where we need to be at a much
accelerated pace.”
Barber outlines some of the changes, both recent and
upcoming. “We’re putting three new boilers in right now, and
within the next month they’ll be up and running. We’re going to
be installing a new climate-control system in the facility; this
state-of-the-art system will provide filtered air throughout the
plant,” he says.
“We’re installing new boxing lines as
well. It’s part of moving forward in our corrugated business.
We’re looking at installing new case lines for handling our 24-quart
plastic milk case and packers for the gallons as well. We added a screw
cap to our quart line here. That allows us to have all of our Special
Request and Skim Plus branded products with a screw cap. We have also
placed an order for a new ESL processor, in order to improve out ESL
processing capabilities.”
Furthering efforts to boost infrastructure and
streamline operations is robotic palletization and evaluation of the
plant’s automated storage and retrieval system. “We’re
installing three robotic palletizers for all our lines to meet the
increased demand for corrugated packaged products,” Barber says.
“The three-station robotic palletizing system will handle up to 60
SKUs per station, with as many as four product configurations for each
robot.”
Farmland also is pursuing a fleet replacement program,
along with a truck-washing facility; the company recently ordered seven new
trucks scheduled for delivery this summer. About 70 percent of the business
out of Wallington is DSD or dealer-based; the rest is through warehouse
distribution.
Peter Clifford, VP of human resources, saw few
resources put back into the plant in the few years before bankruptcy.
“What we’ve accomplished and are planning to accomplish in the
next year is just tremendous,” he says.
Controlling Critical Points
Efforts to improve the Wallington plant not only
enhance Farmland’s ability to make quality products, they go hand in
hand with maintaining its standing as the country’s largest HACCP
plant.
“When the concept of HACCP came about, we were
very excited and interested in it,” recounts Emil Nashed, vice
president of quality assurance and R&D. “The FDA was
looking for small plants to volunteer. We were one of the largest, and they
were a little bit skeptical that we would be able to establish the program.
We worked with them, and it took us about a year to develop the HACCP plan.
We have built teams for every department. We have created that kind of
culture, which we are trying to foster within the organization. It’s
everybody’s responsibility. For us at Farmland, quality is not only
job number one, but quality is everybody’s job. Not only have we
obtained the certification, but we have maintained the certification for
the last three years. It’s a very tough audit; it takes about a week
to do it.
“The FDA recently had a training course for
their inspectors, and I’m proud to say they chose our Grand Rapids
[Mich.] facility to show their inspectors what a facility ought to look
like. We’re proud of that.”
In fact, the team at Farmland strives to reach beyond
the highest quality standards, which is a plus considering the facilities
are inspected by many different organizations, including the U.S. military.
“HACCP is a fluid document. It’s changing all the time,”
Barber says. “We’re always doing whatever we can to improve
it.”
Constant improvement is something that managers say is
elevating morale among the work force as the company regains strength.
“What the HACCP program has really allowed this company to do is to
bring quality to the grassroots level, so that it’s not a management
program,” Pedersen says. “It’s a living, breathing
program that runs true with all the employees.”
Farmland regards training as a high priority, but cost
restraints during bankruptcy forced cutbacks in this area. But the company
has partnered with the New Jersey Department of Labor to introduce an
ambitious training program that provides essential training across all job
functions.
“The whole training effort is to demonstrate
that we believe our employees are important and we’re going to train
them to do their job better and pick up individual skills along the
way,” Clifford says. “We’ve got a very diverse work
force. So we’ve got training going on this year with English as a
second language to help employees become better employees and also become
better citizens.”
Start to Finish
Of the 120 dairy farms in New Jersey, about half of
them provide milk to the Wallington plant. Farmland procures its milk
through Dairy Marketing Services and the Michigan Milk Producers
Association.
Incoming tanker trucks are weighed, then offloaded to
one of 12 raw silos after passing labs. Truck samples are tested for
temperature, bacteria count, water added, antibiotics and somatic cell
count, among other things. Further samples are taken from the silos, after
processing and from finished product. “We believe it’s
important to start with high-quality raw material to end up with
high-quality products,” Nashed remarks. To that end, Farmland works
closely with its producers to ensure a top-quality milk supply.
Samples of finished products are tested, then
maintained for shelf life plus four days before being tested again.
Raw milk moves on for processing, either HTST or ESL,
depending on where it’s headed among Wallington’s 16 filling
lines. The plant processes 1.7 million gallons of milk weekly.
“There’s no reason we couldn’t be at 2 million gallons
very quickly,” Barber says.
Farmland packages its milk in both paper and plastic,
the latter in gallon and half-gallon bottles made in the on-site
blow-molding plant, which makes 200,000 bottles a day. Bottles to be used
in-house are fed to the filling area on overhead tracks; other bottles are
bagged for sale to off-site customers.
Products off the various fillers are packed into
corrugated boxes, plastic cases or bossie carts. The lines include three
plastic gallon fillers, two plastic half-gallon fillers, a paper
half-gallon filler, two paper quart fillers and a bulk filler on the fresh
side; the ESL side features three fillers for quarts, pints and half pints,
and a half-gallon filler with a screw-cap applicator.
Finished products are stored in one of three
refrigerated warehouses before shipping to stores or distribution centers.
The three-high cooler system can hold about 50,000 cases.
Being the Best
One of the main challenges to processing
Farmland’s line of products is boosting efficiency to reduce
operating costs. To move toward that goal, the company recently implemented
an improved preventative maintenance program — along with two new
employees to help run it — to bring the plant up to the next level of
productivity.
In and of themselves, ESL products present a challenge
to processing due to their 55-day shelf life. There cannot be any
deviations from processing procedures; problems that arise generally mean
several hours to rewash and sterilize the equipment. Farmland’s
philosophy is to not take any chances with food safety.
Strict adherence to procedures also is seen as
essential to maintaining Farmland’s 99.9 percent produce acceptance
level, a benchmark the company aims to surpass by constantly improving
programs to ensure continued improved results. Farmland leaders consider
the company’s products to be of superior quality, and they expect
plant productivity to meet or exceed their lofty expectations as well.
And with the amount of improvement to infrastructure
and training programs implemented since reorganization, inspiring
confidence among the work force, any other result would be difficult to
fathom.
“For the people here through the
bankruptcy,” Pedersen says, “to see all this investment is
really something.”
Farmland Dairies
PLANT AT A GLANCE
PLANT AT A GLANCE
Location: Wallington, N.J.
Opened: 1970
Size: 140,000 square feet
Employees: 245
Products made: Milk (regular, flavored and
organic), juice, drinks, ice cream mix and ESL products.
Capacity: 2 million gallons weekly.
Milk storage: 37 tanks for raw, blended,
pasteurized and sterile products.
Processing: Four HTST systems (95,000 pounds/hour and
65,000 pounds/hour), two ESL systems (30,000 pounds/hour).
Filling: 16 lines for gallons, half gallons
(paper and plastic), quarts, pints, half pints and foodservice containers.
Cooler storage: 45,000 square feet
RAPID RESULTS
Farmland Dairies’
plant in Grand Rapids, Mich., packages aseptic milk products under the
Parmalat brand, as well as a variety of other shelf-stable foods including
broth, gravy and Parmalat’s Pomi tomatoes from Italy.
The 105,000-square-foot facility has nine filler
lines, including a new pull-tab filler installed a year ago to affix
reclosable fittings to aseptic boxes. Tim Barber, vice president of
operations, notes that an automated palletizing system is being installed
at Grand Rapids as well as the flagship plant in Wallington, N.J.
$OMN_arttitle="Morale Boosters";?>