Searcy, Ark.: The birthplace of many Land O’Frost products

Andy Hanacek, editor-in-chief of The National Provisioner, visited Land O’Frost’s Searcy, Ark., facility, and discussed its chief goals and place among the companies four facilities with Pat Strickland, plant manager, and Rocky McDermott, production manager. What follows is an excerpt from their overall conversation.

Hanacek: Whereas the other Land O’Frost plants are somewhat focused on mass production of a product line or two, what is the culture and strategy here, in that Searcy is the plant that gets to “play” in a sense, with the new product concepts?

Strickland: It has been very clear that we are a research facility as well as a production facility, and with the retail R&D staff largely located here, many of those new products come through this facility. And it's really a wonderful team in cooperation — in fact, it is very, very cooperative because we all understand the end game, which is producing products for the consuming public. We have a pilot plant here, but most of the testing is really shop-floor testing.

Hanacek: The innovative products that have emerged from Land O’Frost recently show that cooperative effort seems to be working well thus far. How do the employees approach their jobs with this outlook for the facility?

McDermott: Through the years we have accepted that role, and more so in the last few years. We were the first to come up with the Premium product. Of course at that time Lansing was a retort plant and Madisonville didn't exist, so some of the successes we had here, like the Premium product, were moved into Lansing initially and then Madisonville later on. Our employees and the supervisors have learned to accept the fact that we're not going to have a run the same from daylight to dark. We're going to be making some changes, and we're going to stop for an R&D test.

From a production manager’s point of view, that's counterproductive — typically, a production manager would rather be able to start in the morning and shut down at midnight and look at all the volume he’s got. But that's not the way we do things here, and everybody accepts that.

Strickland: Every production person wants efficiency, but here, everybody understands our strategic role in the organization. That role is to be flexible and innovative, and to be that R&D facility, as well as the facility that births products. … You learn to be flexible, to be agile, to be able to do rapid changeovers and other things required.

We’re very proud that not only are many of those new products birthed here, but also we then help bring those products to the other facilities. When the Wrap Kits went to Lansing, we sent personnel to assist with the start-up. Just within the last couple of weeks, we've sent folks to Madisonville to work with slicer operators and machine operators, and to do the training and the start-up of new products there. I've worked at various places, and something that we do not experience here is that win/lose competition between plants; we are very much win/win, and [assistance between plants happens all the time], which just speaks volumes of the Land O'Frost culture.

McDermott: In addition, we certainly don’t ever shortchange quality for efficiency. If there is something [that doesn’t appear right], somebody is going to raise a red flag to alert the supervisor. Everybody has an eye on quality and food safety, and neither one of those will be sacrificed for efficiency.

Hanacek: Has flexibility and versatility always been the culture in Searcy, or is it something that you had to teach the employees or instill in the culture?

Strickland: Rocky mentioned as we were walking through the plant, that 10 years ago it was nothing to have multiple changeovers, film changeovers on a line, as we were doing private label and house brands and the like. So, there was very much a strong foundation of flexibility at this facility. We then entered a period where we were heavily into Premium and Deli Shaved — straight runs that production likes best. Then we introduced the Bistro line, the Sub Kits and other items, and fortunately that foundation was there, making the re-establishment of that culture fairly convenient and easy.

Hanacek: Have you found that the culture here in Searcy impacts anything beyond simple production schedules and operational efficiency?

McDermott: Well, we take employee safety here exceedingly seriously. As Pat always says, it's not an accident, it's an incident, and there's something that caused that incident. To have someone say the [solution] is, you need to be more careful, that’s not the right answer on any incident report. So there's a lot of digging and a lot of work being done behind the scenes to make this of exceedingly safe plant to work, and it has been very successful.