Those who stay awake, analyzing the pros and cons of that next plant expansion or next processing line extension. The ones who worry about efficiency and throughput from the standpoint of making machinery work harder and faster, yet more efficiently. They balance the load between output and equipment failure. They are the little voices whispering in the ears of other executives, advising them whether capital investment in a plant is necessary or if a tweak in the process will solve problems.

They are engineering and operations executives. The backbone of processing operations — folks who rarely see the limelight and get their just desserts.

In the following report, The National Provisioner delves into the world of meat- and poultry-processing engineers and offers a keen look into what shapes the daily lives of these men, what challenges they face and what solutions they have put into motion to solve those challenges. Engineers balance on a daily basis the need for efficient yet fast throughput with the need for processing protein in a clean and safe environment for both employees and products.

They perform this balancing act with the backing of corporate capital, but there’s always a budget and — often more importantly — a deadline to meet when projects come across their desks. Yet, frequently, they are left in the shadows when the limelight shines on their companies. This report gives engineers their moment in the sun, bringing their knowledge and insight to the forefront where some major accomplishments have been made.

Number of employees/plants reporting to you: I have seven staff members reporting to me. The engineering department serves approximately 25 facilities throughout the company, including hatcheries, feedmills, processing plants, fully cooked plants, rendering and distribution facilities.

Describe your processing plant in terms of production throughput.

Strand: Company wide, Foster Farms produced an average of 17.51 million pounds of ready-to-cook products per week, hatched 7.7 million eggs per week and produced 30,000 tons of feed per week in 2005.

What is your primary role as the senior engineering specialist in your company?

Strand: The primary role of the department is to coordinate the design, permitting, construction and startup of both new facilities and major renovations of existing facilities.

How do you successfully manage your company’s engineering/operations standards across multiple locations, plants and teams?

Strand: Project teams, which include representatives from operations, maintenance, environmental, logistics and purchasing, as well as engineering, are developed for each major project. All departments provide input to the design, and knowledge gained from prior projects at other facilities can also be shared.

What percentage of your company’s operating expenses is devoted to infrastructure, equipment purchases and plant floor maintenance projects? What specific capital improvements did you oversee in the past year?

Strand: The most significant project in 2005 was the addition of a spiral oven and freezer line for fully cooked product at our Porterville, Calif., facility. We also broke ground on a hatchery expansion at our Cedar hatchery near Fresno, Calif.

Describe how your company handles the supplier/processor relationship as it concerns technology upgrades and maintenance issues.

Strand: Frequent communication with our equipment suppliers is the key to keeping abreast of technological improvements that may be available in the future, but it also allows for feedback to be provided to manufacturers as to issues that exist on current pieces of equipment with regards to reliability, performance, cleanability and safety. This allows them to address these issues on future models.

In a world of increased food-safety/security requirements, how do you balance the need for those factors with high production requirements? How do you engineer food safety into the operation?

Strand: In a new or remodeled facility, the food-safety aspects of the design are just as important as the layout of the equipment and the people/product flows. The aspects that we focus on are the selection of cleanable and non-corrosive materials for the building and equipment, appropriate floor slopes and drains, good ventilation for condensation control, positive pressure with separation of raw/cook air spaces and filtered/ chilled air. Also, new technologies such as Ultra High Pressure are investigated for the viability with our products.

Describe a project that you nurtured from concept to completion. What were the particular challenges? What was the source of the greatest satisfaction from this project? What would you change in hindsight?

Strand: One recent project that was especially challenging was the addition of a processing line to our fully cooked chicken plant in Porterville, Calif. The major challenge was that the new line was to be positioned between two existing lines. In addition to the new equipment, walls were added, floor drains and structural columns relocated, the refrigeration system was expanded and additional ventilation equipment added. The goal was to minimize the downtime on the adjacent lines and not impact product quality on those lines during the construction process. Another challenge was the impact on the existing ventilation system caused by adding new walls that separate the new line from the adjacent lines. The ventilation requirements of each existing line needed to re-evaluated and modified. The greatest satisfaction was completing the line on time. In hindsight, it would have been helpful to spend time upfront evaluating the existing equipment that feeds the line and the flow of waste material away from both the raw and cook areas. These issues were dealt with during construction. EIE

Nouvel: I assist management in the consultation and development of viable projects, create project scopes/budgets/schedules and manage all major capital projects within the department.

How do you successfully manage your company’s engineering/operations standards across multiple locations, plants and teams?

Nouvel: It is managed through baseline company design and installation standards, interactive communications and diligent management.

What percentage of your company’s operating expenses is devoted to infrastructure, equipment purchases and plant floor maintenance projects? What specific capital improvements did you oversee in the past year?

Nouvel: (At Gold Kist, infrastructure, equipment purchases and maintenance projects are considered capital expenses.) Corporate Engineering managed a large percentage of the infrastructure and equipment purchase projects, including ongoing processing-plant expansions in Guntersville, Ala., and Live Oak, Fla.; a high-speed evisceration project in Carrollton, Ga.; and feed mill ingredient receiving and storage project in Calhoun, Ga.

Describe how your company handles the supplier/processor relationship as it concerns technology upgrades and maintenance issues?

Nouvel: Gold Kist Inc. has ongoing dialogue with our main suppliers through project meetings, product informational meetings, trade shows, etc. Our corporate and plant engineers remain in close contact with our main suppliers to ensure that we are aware of the latest developments in technology. Gold Kist has a proactive maintenance management system, supported through the use of inventory, maintenance and purchasing software, that allows the management of equipment costs and use of spare parts, which can provide valuable evaluations for GK and our vendors on equipment cost of ownership, recurring equipment issues, etc.

In a world of increased food-safety/security requirements, how do you balance the need for those factors with high production requirements? How do you engineer food safety into the operation?

Nouvel: Gold Kist is very aware of the increasing emphasis on food safety and has made it a cornerstone in the design of infrastructure and selection of equipment. Gold Kist has followed the 11 Principles of Food Safety [developed] by the American Meat Institute to ensure emphasis on food safety and security. The Gold Kist Engineering Department also works closely with our customers, plant operations and corporate quality assurance to ensure food-safety design.

Describe a project that you nurtured from concept to completion. What were the particular challenges? What was the source of the greatest satisfaction from this project? What would you change in hindsight?

Nouvel: All projects that involve infrastructure modifications/expansions and equipment installations have their particular challenges. Challenges include identifying an accurate project scope and corresponding cost estimate; providing a “quick” turnaround from concept to startup; ensuring design and installation input from a variety of fragmented sources, including plant operations/maintenance/engineering, corporate health and safety, quality assurance/research and development, environmental engineering, design professionals, vendors, and contractors; and managing the multitude of process changes during the construction phase while maintaining control of budget and schedule.

The greatest satisfaction of any project is realizing the original objective(s) of the project; seeing increased throughput and observing the production of new products.

Gold Kist is always seeking ways to improve project management from concept to startup. Gold Kist is doing this through project “lessons-learned,” improved communications, increased awareness of operational and maintenance requirements, relationship building with design professionals, vendors and contractors, etc. EIE

Kailasapillai: Production is split between liquids and meat operations. The liquids operation averages 250,000 cases (5,000,000 pounds) per week. Meat production averages 75,000 cases (3,000,000 pounds) per week.

What is your primary role as the senior engineering specialist in your company?

Kailasapillai: Manage a team of mechanics and maintain day-to-day operations of the facility. I also manage capital projects and implement new line and upgrades to the facility and processing lines.

How do you successfully manage your company’s engineering/operations standards across multiple locations, plants and teams?

Kailasapillai: Excellent communications between departments help GSF maintain effective day-to-day operations. Our work order system and preventative maintenance program keep the equipment running with minimal downtime.

We have an electronic Information Sharing Program for keeping plant knowledge accessible to mechanics and other operational personnel. This system allows the mechanics to input historical information about equipment and use that at a later date to help them determine a trend or frequency toward key equipment failures. This allows us to better tune our Preventative Maintenance Program.

“Having knowledge is good . . . Finding the knowledge when you need it is even better.”

What percentage of your company’s operating expenses is devoted to infrastructure, equipment purchases and plant floor maintenance projects? What specific capital improvements did you oversee in the past year?

Kailasapillai: Vendors are more partners who have a vested interest in keeping the equipment running at optimal levels. With this philosophy in mind, our vendors/partners provide needed support. We primarily invest in proven technologies that work and have adequate support. This is what keeps our facility running efficiently.

In a world of increased food-safety/security requirements, how do you balance the need for those factors with high production requirements? How do you engineer food safety into the operation?

Kailasapillai: Food safety is first and foremost in our operations. If you cannot make a safe product for the consumers, then it is not worth making. Cleaning the system and the intervals needed for the sanitation department is a key factor on deciding the capacity of each piece of equipment. We have a USDA representative on site for continual inspection of our processes. We try to engineer enough flexibility into each line for expandability at a future date.

Describe a project that you nurtured from concept to completion. What were the particular challenges? What was the source of the greatest satisfaction from this project? What would you change in hindsight?

Kailasapillai: A project I nurtured from concept to completion that gave me great satisfaction was the renovation of a processing room that provided us with extra capacity. The challenge involved was executing each stage in conjunction with production needs. As you take out a piece of old equipment, installing the new equipment and having it running as soon as it is installed was critical. Having the mechanical, electrical and programming ready to go once you flip the switch is always fun and very satisfying.

We would not have changed anything [in that project], as we delivered a product that the production personnel were happy with at the end of the day. EIE

How do you successfully manage your company’s engineering/operations standards across multiple locations, plants and teams?

Kalscheur: We use performance benchmarking, standards development, frequent communication and site visits to exchange thoughts and ideas.

Describe how your company handles the supplier/processor relationship as it concerns technology upgrades and maintenance issues?

Kalscheur: We work extensively with suppliers and the solutions they can provide, given their areas of expertise, and the process applications we use their equipment in — value-added engineering and equipment and/or process applications.

In a world of increased food-safety/security requirements, how do you balance the need for those factors with high production requirements? How do you engineer food safety into the operation?

Kalscheur: The two can work hand in hand together. The challenge for maintenance and engineering is to scale the food-safety requirements up to the size of the operation and build durability and reliability into it.

Describe a project that you nurtured from concept to completion. What were the particular challenges? What was the source of the greatest satisfaction from this project? What would you change in hindsight? If nothing, why not?

Kalscheur: Vision Grading. The challenges were integrating into the business platform and identifying key performance requirements. Creating a paradigm shift in how the company looks at that portion of the business was the source of greatest satisfaction. In hindsight, I’d change nothing. It continues to evolve, and we continue to learn more and will continue to challenge the capabilities and impact it can have on our business. EIE

Lisso: Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation is the second-largest producer of chicken products in the U.S., with sales of more than $5.6 billion in fiscal 2005. The company currently owns 23 chicken processing plants in the U.S. and three in Mexico, nine chicken prepared-foods plants, one turkey-processing plant, and one turkey further-processing plant.

What is your primary role as the senior engineering specialist in your company?

Lisso: To plan, coordinate and direct engineering design, technical resources and large-scale capital projects across the company. I also determine goals for the department within the broad outlines provided by the CEO and Executive Management team, and establish and execute detailed plans to accomplish those goals.

How do you successfully manage your company’s engineering/operations standards across multiple locations, plants and teams?

Lisso: We keep a relatively flat organizational structure. Every engineer reports to a regional manager. Standards can be communicated through a relatively small number of managers and disseminated throughout the organization. The regional structure helps minimize travel and improve time on site for projects while still keeping a short line of communication to the corporate level.

What percentage of your company’s operating expenses is devoted to infrastructure, equipment purchases and plant floor maintenance projects?

Lisso: The company invests a significant portion of its capital in maintaining and growing its asset base. More information is available in our quarterly and annual financial reports filed with the SEC.

What specific capital improvements did you oversee in the past year?

Lisso: The corporate engineering department managed in excess of $190 million in capital projects in 2005, including the construction of a new corporate headquarters building as well as major improvements to existing feed mills, hatcheries, processing plants and distribution center facilities.

Describe how your company handles the supplier/processor relationship as it concerns technology upgrades and maintenance issues?

Lisso: Due to the size of our company, we try to manage relationships on this type of issue on a large scale — dealing primarily with national account representatives to provide consistency across the board.

In a world of increased food-safety/security requirements, how do you balance the need for those factors with high production requirements? How do you engineer food safety into the operation?

Lisso: Food safety is our top priority in all project design. We will not compromise food safety to improve capacity or production throughput. Food safety is an integral part of all engineering design review. Design development and review includes engineering, production, quality control, R&D and safety personnel throughout the process. Outside technical resources utilized when needed are also familiar with food-safety requirements and are thoroughly screened for their experience and capabilities. Our company is also a big proponent of continuous improvement. Not only does this include industry-related conferences and seminars, but many of our engineers hold PE licenses that require continuous education, and several are seeking advanced degrees.

Describe a project that you nurtured from concept to completion. What were the particular challenges? What was the source of the greatest satisfaction from this project? What would you change in hindsight?

Lisso: Our company recently converted several manufacturing plants from the “weigh/price/label” concept to production of net-weight packages for a high-profile retail customer. The project was particularly challenging because it involved a complete change in the way we do business. An entire facility had to be shut down and quickly converted at minimum downtime. The greatest source of satisfaction was the on-time startup within our budget and a satisfied customer. The one big thing we would do differently would be to contract refrigeration supply on our own. We included the refrigeration under a general contractor’s scope that did not produce optimal results. EIE

Bradstreet: Two beef plants with 5,000-plus head per day capacity, one beef plant with 6,000-plus head per day capacity and one pork plant with 8,000-plus head per day capacity.

What is your primary role as the senior engineering specialist in your company?

Bradstreet: I assist plant maintenance organizations in managing plant maintenance activities, as well as development of plant projects to increase efficiency or maintain/enhance operations.

How do you successfully manage your company’s engineering/ operations standards across multiple locations, plants and teams?

Bradstreet: Daily contact with facilities by phone and e-mail. E-mail has revolutionized our ability to communicate because of the ability the share documents and photographs.

What specific capital improvements did you oversee in the past year?

Bradstreet: One plant expansion, several equipment/process enhancements.

Describe how your company handles the supplier/processor relationship as it concerns technology upgrades and maintenance issues?

Bradstreet: Technology upgrades are handled by our Information Services Group.

In a world of increased food-safety/security requirements, how do you balance the need for those factors with high production requirements?

Bradstreet: Food-safety issues are given high priority and are recognized as an integral part of how we do business today. Simply put, it’s part of the job — a very important part.

How do you engineer food safety into the operation?

Bradstreet: A great deal of thought goes into this process, and as time has passed, we have changed our Standard Operating Procedures to reflect this paradigm shift.

Describe a project that you nurtured from concept to completion. What were the particular challenges? What was the source of the greatest satisfaction from this project?

Bradstreet: The best project so far was the part I played in the installation of a completely new Ground Beef / Material Handling facility at one of our plants. The challenges were to forecast and meet our future needs, and I feel we did a good job of that. Walking though this facility several years after completion, I still feel a lot of satisfaction in it. EIE