Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - November 2008 - (Page 18)

2008 Executives of the Year Continued from page 16 of operations, the company redesigned and reengineered the production operation over a two-year period while continuing to satisfy customers’ needs with a signiﬁcantly reduced production capacity. However, the sales team’s opportunities to sell were limited. Snak King just couldn’t produce enough volume to solicit new business. As a result, the snack manufacturer didn’t launch new products for a while as a result of capacity constraints, Schieldge says. Management couldn’t get into the plant to actually work on the plant trials. “Now that we have the capacity,” he says, “we’re trying to approach new product development in a logical manner, get down there and work through the plant trials.” Snak King now is focusing on new initiatives since the plant is up to speed with greater capacity and improved efﬁciency. “Product development has always been a big focus for us,” says Barry Levin, chairman and CEO of the City of Industry, Calif.-based operation. “So one of the things we’ve done recently is to expand the marketing and R&D departments [to focus on new products].” The kingdom was beginning to come together. Full Speed Ahead The company has restarted its new product efforts, thanks in part to the company’s new state-of-the-art lines that are housed inside the 177,000-sq.-ft. facility. The tortilla chip lines, one of the casualties from the roof collapse, now are outﬁtted with PLC-controls where recipes are downloaded and automatically adjusted to set points. One of the lines pumps out 5,000 lb. of tortilla chips per hour while the second pumps out 2,800 lb. of chips per hour. The other lines that are not fully PLCcontrolled operate under strict process controls that require a line supervisor to manually complete control sheets against the speciﬁcations of the product, whether it is popcorn, pork rinds, nuts or extruded cheese snacks. Doing so enables the operation to maintain consistent product quality from shift to shift, Schieldge says. “We utilize computer programs to capture the production output and compare that Top: Mark Schieldge, vice president of operations, explains to Marina Mayer, SF&WB’s managing editor, how production works at Snak King’s 177,000-sq.-ft. plant. Bottom: Here, freshly made Veggie Chips cool before falling into a seasoning tumbler and travel into a retention hopper. 18 Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - NOVEMBER 2008 www.snackandbakery.com http://www.snackandbakery.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - November 2008

Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - November 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Cover Story: The Comeback King Royal Treatment Let Freedom Ring New Products The Heat is On Engineering Management Going in New Directions Warm Up with Cold Treats The Final Word

Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - November 2008

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