The system of stuffers, linkers and cutters used on the two link lines were purchased through Reiser while the plant’s other line is dedicated to making chub products, using two, Kartridge Pak (KP) Fillers that feed the finished chubs to a single glycol chiller.
“About 50 percent of our total production goes through the KP machines,” Eskridge says.
Farther upstream, the sausage is mixed using four mixers, all of which use CO2 chilling. For the production of the plant’s 1-lb. chubs, which constitutes about half of the production at Xenia, hot-boned, unchilled pork is used while the link meat is chilled during mixing. The seasoning blend used to produce the links and Bob Evans rolled sausage, is blended at the Xenia plant.
A total of 100 employees work at the Xenia plant. In the harvesting area where sows are slaughtered, up to 38 workers process about 50 sows per hour, which translates to 425-450 head per day, or about five truckloads per day. Thirty-two workers are in production, shipping and receiving and an additional 11 people are responsible for sanitation while five workers handle maintenance. The target size of the sow-only operation is 525 lbs. with 515 lbs. being the average weight for both plants this past year. One of the main suppliers is another Ohio-based company, Cooper Farms, but the majority of the suppliers are dealers who work directly with producers and know companies like BEF Foods require the top-quality animals and sell the smaller, thinner sows to the boning customers. The plant runs a single shift at full production for about seven months per year and the remaining months’ production includes about four days per week, processing an average of four loads per day. Out the door, finished products each day total about 125,000 lbs. During periods of high demand, operations stretch to six days per week. Fortunately, it’s not the norm, but Townsley recalls several years ago when sow prices spiked and production slowed.
Eskridge goes out on the floor multiple times per day and can sense whether operations are going well in a matter of seconds.
“I like to see things myself and make decisions,” Eskridge says, and this presents opportunities for teaching. He makes it a point to almost always take a line worker or supervisor with him to demonstrate what he looks for and pointing out what they should look for.
“It’s more of an educational opportunity vs. going out on the floor to gather information,” he says.
Thanks to the company’s adoption of Lean Manufacturing, a number of key “touch points” have been identified that serve as barometers for production during a shift. By simply walking to three key locations in both the harvesting area of the plant and in processing, “I can see how the link lines are each running; if the stuffers are at the right set point and if we are producing the right amount of finished goods.”
Like Johnsonville and Jimmy Dean branded products, Bob Evans links, patties and rolls are made from pre-rigor pork vs. butcher-kill products. These companies also typically procure premium-quality sows and purchase the top 15 percent to 20 percent of animals on the market, also known as “fancy sows.” More traditional large-scale pork processors chill the carcass after stunning, sticking, dehairing and evisceration vs. sows processed in pre-rigor plants, where animals are stunned, stuck, skinned (similar to beef carcasses), eviscerated and then boned hot, without being chilled.
“Literally, from the time that sow walks into that restrainer until the roll of sausage is produced is about three hours,” Townsley says.
The plant utilizes four mixers, one of which is decades old and the other three brought in along with newer stuffing equipment in 2013. Eskridge focuses much of his and the team’s attention on operating equipment efficiency (OEE) and constantly monitors his plant’s hourly OEE percentage. The goal is 85 percent, which is regarded throughout the processing industry as world-class production.
“The last two years we’ve been just over 85 and just under 85,” he says. “[Through July] we’re tracking slightly over 84 right now.”
Eskridge and his team leaders at Xenia and their counterparts at the Hillsdale plant meet weekly by phone and are constantly interacting and comparing notes because both facilities are very similar in operations and production. They are able to advise each other of issues and opportunities. Lean Manufacturing is a tool both plants utilize to control waste throughout their operations.
“We collectively share data on monthly projects and weekly numbers,” Eskridge says, adding that he talks to his counterpart at the sister plant daily. “We do a lot of sharing,” he says, “more than I’ve ever done at anyplace else I’ve worked.”
Leadership lessons
Townsley has strong ties to Ohio, where he grew up just west of Columbus, graduated from The Ohio State Univ. and where his family has maintained its 200-acre farm that dates back to the 1800s. Shorthorn cattle are now raised on the farm alongside acres of row crops.
But Townsley still has fond memories of the years he worked at IBP, Smithfield and Premium Standard Farms, living in the Midwest and Southeast. He was at IBP when the late-Bob Peterson was at the helm and years before the beef company was acquired by Tyson Foods.
He recalls Peterson holding “president’s staff meetings” about three times per year, when all of the IBP managers would gather in the cafeteria of the corporate headquarters with the CEO to hear about the state of the company, the climate of the industry and the company’s strategy moving forward.
“He was all business, all the time,” Townsley says of Peterson, adding that he was “a very serious guy,” who was known for being opinionated, dynamic and was revered as a driver of the business.
“Bob was probably the most inspiring CEO I ever worked for,” he adds, comparing him to Vince Lombardi, the legendary leader of the Green Bay Packers.
“You came out of those meetings ready to run through a wall,” Townsley says of the locker-room style pep talks made by Peterson.
Townsley also remembers at least once, when Peterson went out of his way to connect with him on a personal level. In his third year at IBP, Townsley recalls sitting at his desk in the company’s Dakota City, Nebraska, headquarters and Peterson made a somewhat rare appearance in the sales department, known as the “bullpen,” just about one week before Townsley was to marry his now-wife, Jane.
“It was a Tuesday,” he remembers, when he saw Peterson out of the corner of his eye. “I know the exact customer I was on the phone with – his name was Mike – and I said ‘Mike, I have got to call you back.’” While everyone in the room was speculating about why Peterson was visiting their part of the building, he approached Townsley and graciously congratulated him on his upcoming union with Jane, who was coincidentally the hygienist at Peterson’s dental office, where she shared the news of her pending nuptials with him.
Townsley had the privilege of going from working under one legendary leader to another when he left IBP and went to work at Smithfield Packing Co., where Joe Luter III was the boss and Bo Manly was his right-hand man. Looking back, he says the contrast in Luter’s and Peterson’s leadership is fascinating. He categorizes Peterson’s approach as black and white.
“Joe was more concerned with transforming the industry,” Townsley says, and part of that transformation included Smithfield going on an acquisition binge. “Bo [Manly] helped bring his vision to life.”
Manly came to Smithfield in 1986, after about four years working at IBP as assistant to the president alongside Bob Peterson.
“He was a bright, young, Harvard MBA who had held a few industry positions before coming to IBP,” Townsley says of Manly. “Bo and Gene Lehman worked together to get the company into the pork business with the start-up of the Storm Lake, Iowa, plant.”
Manly left IBP in 1986 to come to Smithfield to assist Joe Luter with his vision of vertical integration/coordination. It was a transitional period in the pork business and especially for Smithfield. At that time there were a finite number of pigs in North Carolina and Virginia and the Gwaltney and Smithfileld packaging plants were two of the primary processors in the region, each killing about 8,000 to 9,000 head per day. Because it wasn’t financially feasible to bring in more pigs from the Midwest, Luter looked at how the business could be more standardized in terms of the specs of the animals the company was procuring. One possibility was moving toward the chicken industry’s model of vertical integration. Producers like Carrol’s Foods and Murphy Family Farms were limiting production to what could be accommodated by the shackle space in the region vs. over producing and selling the surplus at a discount in the Midwest.
Townsley relates that it was Manly and Luter who approached the larger producers and asked them if they would expand production if a centrally located facility was established to accept the additional production, which they readily agreed they would. This was the impetus behind the construction of Smithfield’s massive plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina.
“So they started putting sows down. Smithfield built Tar Heel, which came on line in 1992 with the capacity to kill 32,000 head per day.”
In 1994, Manly hired Townsley to head pork sales for Smithfield Packing, which included the Tar Heel plant. That was the execution of a Luter vision for transforming the pork industry. Townsley points out that, in contrast, Peterson was more focused on operational excellence and being the low-cost leader in the beef and pork industries.
“Peterson was keenly aware of what each plant was doing, how it was performing and in the weeds,” Townsley says. “Joe laid out the strategy and expected people to go execute against it.”
