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Getting It Done
by James Dudlicek
Perpetual upgrades help make Roberts’ Omaha
plant all things to all customers.
In 1922, ConAgra predecessor Nebraska Consolidated Mills reported its first profit, the Omaha Grain Exchange launched radio station WAAW and Roberts Dairy opened its flagship plant at 2901 Cuming St. in downtown Omaha.
With numerous additions and improvements over the
ensuing eight decades, the plant has evolved in to a round-the-clock
facility that helps its sister plants fill more than 900 million gallons of
milk annually for the company, along with juices and drinks, sour cream and
dips as part of Roberts’ complete line of branded dairy products
serving seven states, plus ice cream mix for Dairy Queen.
“We’ve developed as a company to be pretty
much everything to everybody,” Roberts president Jeff Powell says in
explaining many of the improvements made at the Omaha plant in recent years
to better serve customers. “Look at the channels of distribution
— if you want it floor loaded, we can do that. If you want a
corrugated box, we can do that. If you want a milk case, we can do that. An
80-count bossy, a dolly — we can do that.”
Risings costs of everything from raw materials to fuel
to insurance deepen the importance of new technologies and other devices to
boost efficiency and drive costs down. Among the most prominent of these
improvements at Roberts has been an automatic packing system that can
package milk and cultured products in a broad array of formats being
demanded by retail and foodservice customers. The machine offers a variety
of packaging combinations including cardboard flats, boxes and shrink
wrapping.
Processing improvements have included a new HTST
pasteurizer and enhancements to Roberts’ sour cream and dip
operation. “It opened up some bigger opportunities for us that we
previously hadn’t been into as far as warehouse business,”
Powell says. “It made us more efficient and able to turn out
more volume with the manpower that we had.”
Further upgrades in Omaha include a blend skid, which
Powell says enhanced processing capabilities and helped improve product
quality; and paperless picking by warehouse forces armed with handheld
computers. Meanwhile, the Kansas City plant was outfitted with a robotic
palletizer. “Where feasible and where advantageous,” Powell
says, “we’ve helped improve efficiency.”
The last 80 years have seen the neighboring interstate
highway and an expanding Creighton University basically landlock the plant.
But Roberts officials say the proximity to good transportation, as well as
a metropolitan area that continues to worship the brand, make the site a
good home.
The Basics
Up to 18 trucks arrive daily at the Omaha
plant’s two receiving bays, each with 6,000 gallons of raw milk
provided by dairy farms affiliated with Dairy Farmers of America, a joint
owner of Roberts Dairy. “Right now is our slow time,”
plant manager Deron Welty says during a July visit. “In another
month, with schools open, we’ll be up to 18, 19 trucks.”
The first of a battery of routine tests is performed
on the raw milk before it’s unloaded. Further testing is done on the
raw tanks and finished products, as well as hourly checks on the fillers,
Welty explains.
Following pasteurization, milk moves to the filling
lines. The four fillers package milk in formats ranging from 4-ounce
paperboard to plastic gallons. Plastic jugs are blow-molded on site and fed
to the fillers on overhead tracks. Three molding machines — 4- and
6-head units for gallons and a 6-head for halves — churn out 4,000
gallon bottles and 3,000 half-gallon bottles per hour. An automated
labeling system ensures all those bottles are properly marked for their
contents.
Alongside its fluid operation, Roberts’ Omaha
plant manufactures sour cream and sour cream-based snack dips. At the heart
of this set-up are five new 2,500-gallon sour cream tanks. There are nine
cultured tanks in all, ranging from 1,000 to 2,500 gallons.
Finished products take their turn in the
aforementioned automated packing system, which forms cardboard trays
(as needed by customer request) upon which containers of products are
stacked. The loaded flats then head through a shrink tunnel for wrapping in
clear plastic film.
From there it’s on to the cooler to await
shipment on Roberts trucks for direct-sales distribution or movement to
off-site distribution centers. The cooler was enlarged in 1990, Welty
notes, with a roller bed added to ease the strain on product pickers who
track orders on hand-held computers. “No matter how big your cooler
is, you always need more space,” he quips.
Rounding out the Omaha campus are a climate-controlled
dry goods warehouse; a fleet garage for maintenance of trucks, some of
which were still having 100th anniversary graphics applied this summer; and a crate
shop that receives and cleans incoming plastic milk cases.
Playing it Safe
Roberts Dairy takes safety seriously, and during its
affiliation with Quality Chekd Dairies Inc., the company received an extra
boost in that department. In 2004, all four of Roberts’ plants at the
time — Omaha, Kansas City, Iowa City and Des Moines, which has since
closed — received Merit of Excellence Awards from Quality Chekd,
signifying production that surpasses the high standards necessary to carry
the QC stamp.
Currently the company conducts monthly unannounced
internal audits in all of its manufacturing facilities, performed by the
plant managers from the other locations, explains Dayle Reynolds, manager
of quality assurance, control and safety. “This has increased our
awareness to each other’s internal needs and has allowed each manager
to see another operation on a day-to-day basis.”
Audits developed by the managers include various
aspects of security, quality, distribution, sanitation and plant
safety,” Reynolds says. “The audits are scored, and the goal is
to have our facilities ‘inspection ready’ at all times and
spark friendly competition to constantly improve the scores,” she
says.
Roberts Dairy maintains a list of approved suppliers
that comes from its corporate partnership with Prairie Farms, as well as a
few suppliers the company has worked with to get them elevated to its
approved suppliers listing.
As in nearly every food company since 9/11, bioterror
concerns have grown in importance. Roberts’ biosecurity training
program has been in place since 2002, and all employees attend annual
training. “We evaluate the program and respond to our employees needs
based on our training class feedback,” Reynolds says.
Samples are submitted to an outside laboratory monthly
for quality testing. These tests are scored and reported to each location
monthly. “Extra-credit points have been added in various categories
that each plant can earn to improve their monthly score,” Reynolds
explains. “These scores are tied back to each location as an
incentive to laboratory personnel and shift supervisors to take ownership
in the overall quality and safety of their facility.”
Beyond food, safety for the people who make it
isn’t ignored either. Roberts does all of its required safety
training in house, with each tailoring its program so it’s
site-specific.
“I am a certified OSHA trainer, but I rely on
our corporate owners for ideas and, occasionally, training guides,”
Reynolds says. “Training employee to ‘Think Safety’ daily
has helped us lower our soft-tissue injury rate and given ownership to the
employees in their daily tasks.”
All of Roberts’ locations have active safety
committees that meet monthly to discuss safety issues and do facility
walk-arounds to document any new concerns.
Having been a part of Roberts Dairy for 84 of its
first 100 years, the Omaha plant and the folks who make it work are
obviously prepared to continue the company’s reputation for quality
and safety well into its next century.
ROBERTS DAIRY
PLANT AT A GLANCE
PLANT AT A GLANCE
Location: Omaha,
Neb.
Opened: 1922;
extensive remodeling since then.
Size: 50,000
square feet on a full city block, encompassing processing, fleet
maintenance and dry storage, plus corporate and Omaha Division offices.
Employees: 230
Products made: Milk,
juice/drinks, sour cream/dips, ice cream mix.
Capacity: 720,000
gallons weekly.
Processing: Two HTST systems @ 3,000 and 6,000 gallons per hour; nine
cultured tanks ranging from 1,000 to 2,500 gallons each.
Filling: Four
fluid (gallon, half gallon, quart/pint/half pint, 4/8 ounce), two sour
cream (8/16/24 ounces, 3/5 pounds).
Warehouse: 26,000
square feet cooler, 10,000 square feet dry.
ROBERTS LOCATIONS
In addition to the plant at its Omaha headquarters,
Roberts Dairy manages three other processing facilities:
Kansas City, Mo. — Roberts’ plant on Emanuel Cleaver Boulevard
is the only full-line fluid dairy located in Kansas City. Milk at this
plant is supplied by local Kansas and Missouri farmers. Roberts’
16-ounce To Go Drinks are bottled here, in a variety of milk and fruit
flavors. Before Roberts became Kansas City’s hometown dairy, the
former Fairmont® Dairy joined Zarda® Dairy, resulting in the Fairmont-Zarda Dairy. In 1998,
Fairmont-Zarda Dairy joined with Roberts Dairy and adopted the Roberts
name.
Iowa City, Iowa — The facility on Dodge Street in Iowa City was
formerly known as HomeTown Dairy, established in 1922 by the Swaner
family. In 1980, the operation joined with Roberts and kept its HomeTown
Dairy name until it was changed to Roberts Dairy in 1994. The name change
enabled Roberts to take advantage of regional distribution and advertising
support. Roberts’ Iowa City plant is the company’s only
production facility in the state; a distribution center in Grimes helps
move fresh dairy products to schools, restaurants and other foodservice
institutions in the region.
Norfolk, Neb. — In May 1996, the Hiland-Roberts Ice Cream Co. was
formed through a joint venture of Roberts Dairy and Hiland Dairy of
Springfield, Mo. Hiland-Roberts is Nebraska’s only active ice cream
production facility. It generates more than 10 million gallons of ice
cream, yogurts and sherbets annually and frequently produces dairy goods
for other brand names.
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