Meat+Poultry - November 2022 - 40

PLANT PROFILE
By changing its focus
to shelf-stable snack
products and summer
sausage, Old Wisconsin
widened its distribution
beyond retail grocery.
pride in taking care of its employees and doing
it with actions rather than just words.
With the labor shortage in meat processing
and the demand for their products high,
Old Wisconsin committed to maintaining a
generous work-life balance for workers. The
nature of the industry dictates some weekend
work and for years, employees had to work
overtime to keep up with year-round demand,
but recently a policy of flexibility has been
implemented by the management team.
" The Saturdays and Sundays are fewer
and fewer than we have had in past, " Buddig
said. " And when we do have that, we want
to try to be as transparent as possible. One
of the comments was, 'I don't mind working
on a Saturday, but let me know when.'
That's the kind of thing we have to take into
consideration and we're doing that more
and more. "
Overtime now is based on a schedule.
Employees know when they have to work on
Saturdays and can plan accordingly, and they
know that two weekends per month they won't
have to work. For those that like the overtime,
there's a signup sheet for shifts outside of
their department.
" That was huge in terms of building equity
with our employees, " Chuck Pfrang, vice
president of plant operations at Old Wisconsin,
added. " To be able to go to them and say on
these weekends you're not working, and we
mean it. I would say of all the things that
we've done to build equity with our staff, that
was huge. "
40 MEAT+POULTRY | 11.22 | www.meatpoultry.com
SOME THINGS OLD...
Old Wisconsin built the 100,000-square-foot
packaging plant in 2015 and moved into the
greenfield build in 2016. Prior to the build,
packaging had been at the formulation,
stuffing, thermal processing and cut down
plant, which gained about 35% floor space once
packaging moved. The original plant also got a
full make over with upgrades to match the new
packaging plant.
" It was completely gutted and re-built under
USDA inspection, " Pfrang said. " We were still
making product the whole time. "
The new packaging plant handles
approximately 130,000 lbs a day and 35
different formulations tracked from batch to
combo to barrel. Depending on the product,
some go directly to the packaging line, but
either way, every single stick can be traced
back to its origin at any point in the process.
Performance is tracked by real time metrics
on large digital display monitors with finished
product inventory stored in a warehouse with
the capacity of 2,000 pallets. But the show
piece of the new facility is an enclosed loft
above that holds all the vacuum pumps for
all the machines. It was a challenge for the
builder, but Old Wisconsin, the engineers and
builder worked through it and made it happen.
" That was something the employees talked
about and suggested when asked, " Pfrang said.
" They wanted us to get the vacuum pumps and
the heat and everything else that comes with
them off the floor, so that's what we did. "
The 110,000 to 120,000 lbs per day produced
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