How Flexible Equipment Powers Scalable Co-Packing with Jared Ellsworth

Mike Mead: Absolutely. One of the things that impresses me with working in the company and seeing what you do is our changeover process. And obviously, we’re running three shifts a day. We’re operating every day. And we’re constantly running a project, and then moving things around, and setting up for a new project. And how do you manage all of that? What goes into that?

Jared Ellsworth: So, I mean, each team is a part of the body. So, if something fails, then the entire team, the entire body pays for that. So, it’s great. Here, we have a tremendous line of communication, so those failures are cut to a bare minimum. And when we move things around and change things over, large profiles are taken into consideration, what room, what product we’re running alongside of other things. Because we’ve become so versatile with that, we have curtains set up everywhere. So, now, we’re really able to contain any type of cross-contamination threat out there. But as far as managing that. Group emails, we send out emails and communicate with other team members. So, everyone’s on the same page. And our team has gotten across all three shifts that are so well and so well versed at how the machinery operates, and moves, and how to set things up properly, that changeovers are quick and easy.

Mike Mead: Yeah. Yeah, it’s very impressive. I know we tend to work with higher volume clients, so a lot of times those projects are running for a week or two weeks straight across multiple shifts. But I’m always impressed when we’re getting towards the end of a production run and we’re setting up for the next thing that some of that equipment may use. It could be conveyors, it could be any aspect of that equipment. But being able to come in the next day and see a total different configuration with a different type of product running. Because I know, like you said, there’s many departments that go into it from a quality aspect, making sure that everything’s cleaned properly, set up in a designated area, and then vetted. So, that’s just very impressive to me.

Jared Ellsworth: Right. Yeah. So, because the day shift has customers coming to watch their product run a lot of the times. Second shift, third shift, really don’t understand the layout of the line. So, it’s super important that every detail that we’ve discussed in meetings prior to that are laid out. And I have what’s called a warboard. I call it the warboard behind me, where I lay out machinery. And I’ll even come up with drawings and I’ll send it to the act shift, and they know exactly what to expect. That way when we come in the next day, the customer’s not waiting around and we can take right off running for them.

Mike Mead: So, another area that we pride ourselves in doing really well is helping our clients diversify their products across different market segments. So, with that said, it could be a pretzel company or a chip company that sells their product in grocery and they want to sell it into one of the bigger box stores. So, maybe it’s a larger bag or it’s some kind of value added solution, or it could be variety packs. How does that type of change happen as far as we take their bulk product, and then how are you able to manage that across all the different types of packaging formats?