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Upgrading to full automation with Farmers’ Grain & Feed
7 Plays8 months ago
Join Steven Kilger, the host of the Feed & Grain Podcast, as he takes you on a captivating journey alongside Tim Kreilkamp, president, and Glenn Schellinger, mill manager of Farmers’ Grain & Feed. Discover the transformative story of building a new feed mill in Allenton, Wisconsin, and the profound impact it has on the community, employee loyalty, and overall efficiency. From the secrets of staff buy-in to the groundbreaking integration of technology, explore the insights and "whoa" moments that come from opening a new feed mill.
Podcast Sponsored by Pneumat Systems.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, everyone. My name is Stephen Kilgore. I'm the managing editor for Feeding Grain magazine and the host of the Feeding Grain podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive deep into the issues affecting the feed manufacturing, grain handling, and allied industries. Today's episode is brought to you by the Binwip from Numat Systems. The powerful dual impact Binwip removes the toughest buildup and blockages in industrial storage silos without hazardous silo entry. Learn more today at binwip.com.
Interview with Tim Krellkamp and Glenn Schellinger
00:00:31
Speaker
Today's episode is a throwback with Tim Krellkamp, president of farmers grain and feed and Glenn Schellinger, the mill manager, talking about their feed mill in Ellington, Wisconsin. This interview was actually turned into a cover story, but that just means that I had to cut out about 95% of what we actually talked about. In this interview, we talk about the building of a new feed mill versus the renovating of an old one. What a project like this means to the community.
00:00:57
Speaker
employee loyalty, and of course, some just general facts about their new feed mill. This was recorded in a working feed mill. So please forgive the amount of background noise you might hear during the interview. I really hope you enjoy it. And if you want to help out the podcast and are listening to this in a podcasting app, please rate us, please rate us and subscribe. If you're listening online, sign up for the feed and grade newsletter industry watch to see when the latest podcasts are posted and stay up to date with all the latest news from around the industry.
00:01:25
Speaker
Now on to the show.
Decision to Build a New Feed Mill
00:01:27
Speaker
Thank you guys so much for taking the time to talk to us today. We're really happy to be here. So why don't we start at the beginning? When did you guys decide that a new mill might be in your future? We bring down
00:01:58
Speaker
So what we've agreed to is at the time we need to load up bins. So we need manufacturing operating separately from logistics because what happens today is
00:02:29
Speaker
We had those green bins out there. We had three bins and a dryer. Wet bins out there, right? So we thought, okay, why don't we make this our center for the feed mill? And we started out with, well, we'll do it small and we'll just do some of the production up here and we'll do some down there. And we got further into the plantings. It doesn't make sense. Well, why don't we move it all? Why don't we just get a bigger mixer and we can do everything? Well, why don't we just add this on? That's what we ended up with. Let's put that on. Let's put that on. Here we are. So we felt it was the best thing to put a whole
00:02:30
Speaker
and it has to go right into a truck.
Technological Innovations in Feed Mills
00:03:17
Speaker
is talking to the scale and it's supposed to be that way if it's not it's self-correcting continuously so that software makes itself smarter the more you use it the smarter it is so the quality of this feed is going to be so much higher there's no way we could have a good quality program at our old mill you can't comply with the standards when you have so much hand activity going on how do you catch those data points you can't right you can't hear you catching everyone by the time we're done are you familiar with Power BI?
00:03:44
Speaker
It's a Microsoft product, so it kind of measures you and it goes out to different systems and it kind of holds it all together and it displays it in the graph on the layer, however you want to see it. But that's what we're going to have a bunch of dashboards out here because we have so many data points. If the information is captured, we can pull it and use it to measure ourselves.
00:04:02
Speaker
Yeah, the data collection I think is next big growth area in the industry overall. So it's great that you guys are kind of taking advantage of that. Yeah, so we're hoping, well, I'm not hoping, we will. If you give us about a year, we'll have a whole bunch of dashboards that we'll be able to tell you how much gluten we use and what the trend is. And it makes us smarter when we buy. In July, we find out once we get some data there, it's like, oh, July, we should never buy this type of product because it's always bad. You know, maybe we'll learn something like that.
Company History and Structure
00:04:30
Speaker
Very cool. Can you give me a hug?
00:04:31
Speaker
history kind of farmers grain and feed little history the Hess family started the co-op 1913 the son got involved and i don't know if i have the years memorized they're there i just don't have them in my head i'll be sending you a copy so you can always double check so then grandpa or dad has got hit by the train in allentons so the son took over and he was in his early 30s i'm sorry you brushed past you got hit by a dream yes
00:05:01
Speaker
So it was a co-op the entire time. So there was different managers. We had a majority stock chair of it. And then before we bought, there was two people, Dave Schellinger, distant relation, and Terry Toich. And they ran the place for probably 30 years. And then they wanted out. They were at retirement age. And my dad sat on the board of directors with them. And he says, you know, maybe we should go back to retirement.
00:05:29
Speaker
long story short, we ended up with it. And here we are today. We're very, very happy from 2006 that we did jump in and do that. So a little history there. So WB Holdings has all those companies underneath it. So it started out with trucking. So my great grandfather's
00:05:57
Speaker
My dad bought it in 65 and then my brother and sister and myself bought it in 93. So it's four generations? Yes. You said it was 2006. You guys got into the feed game. Yeah, feed and implements. It was farmers incorporated. So we split it out and the implement was on its own and grain and feed was on itself at that point. So how many locations do you guys have that in total that kind of fall under your umbrella?
Feed Mill Operations and Efficiency
00:06:21
Speaker
Total? Yeah. Oh goodness.
00:06:24
Speaker
23 so you're pretty big in this area then pretty big employer and um we had 550 employees total wow yeah that's a lot and that includes california new jersey okay mawaki so well we have warehouse company him wp warehouse
00:06:39
Speaker
So that has two locations in California and two in New Jersey. Okay. Okay. And is this your only feed mill? Do you guys have? That is the only one. So can you guys, uh, tell me about the process a little bit. So once your grain or ingredient, your ingredients are dropped off, how do they kind of move through the mill eventually make your final products? So we see this is a major, major bin cluster. Um, orders are taken at the front counter. Okay.
00:07:10
Speaker
AID pushed into the automation system when the producer, the production guy wants to make that formula and he calls it up and initiates it, sends it to the scale, scales it, which pulls it out of bins, blends it, and puts it to a load-up bin or a bag and cover.
00:07:35
Speaker
run into a final form. So you see, you guys are able to make feet almost on demand then depending on what formula they want. Right. Excellent. Very cool. How long does that take? Here's, here's the best way to explain it. And I'll step in here. No storage at the old facility. So the best way to handle everything is it's an emergency. So everything was an emergency, most everything. And if we got to get the mind changed and saying, you know what, let's, let's do tomorrow's orders today. Yeah. So you said that this mill is four times as efficient as last one. Yeah.
00:08:05
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. That's the capability to be four times as... So how many tons do you guys produce a week? We were approximate 150. Okay. A day. A day? Yes. A day. Four times that on the conservative side. Okay. We think of everything is right for you to do more than that, but we want to be conservative. Like we discussed earlier, you're not integrated producer. You're not just doing four types or you can just pound it out. How is your customer base handling it? Are they excited?
Employee Retention and Workplace Culture
00:08:33
Speaker
Producers in this area are excited.
00:08:42
Speaker
is just as excited as they are about what they're doing. It's passionate. And certainly there's a lot of passion here with this team that works here. So there's 22 people, but there's virtually zero turnover. We just don't have people leaving us unless it's retirement or sickness or something like that. But other than that, people don't leave here. It's a big accomplishment because that's really rare. I know it is. And it's a smaller group, so there's only 20 of them. But they're really solid and they're all bought in. And that relates to the customer also when they're delivering.
00:09:11
Speaker
Somebody can tell that when somebody bought in, right? When you have a delivery person come, you know if they're just there at a bunch of clock or they're there because they really want to be there. Right. What'd you say is your secret to getting your staff to buy into your mission? I would say a big part of it is their leader, which is fun.
00:09:26
Speaker
kind of participate in it. Otherwise, why should I? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I would say that's a major part. Talk a little bit about the advantages to having a grain elevator on site too, that I know the pipes not quite complete yet, but eventually you'll be able to pull over your bulk ingredients straight from the bins, right?
Advantages of On-site Grain Elevator
00:09:43
Speaker
Yeah, so a major portion of the
00:10:03
Speaker
going to diet has last few years just kind of skyrocketed and having corn that can be reclaimed to a feed mill without trucking it just like starting up some mortars the milk more efficient and the diets are more stable when you you know you got the variations with corn silage and haylage are ready the junkie the corn steady that makes
00:10:28
Speaker
truck record to the mill at that kind of volume. Just like we were saying before, you spend hours hauling it. Which is all costs. All costs, staff, trucks. Wasted costs. Yeah. So if you're going to take it off the field, put it someplace where you don't have to re-handle. Yeah. And you guys, you mentioned that you guys own your own fleet. So how far out do you guys kind of go with your deliveries? Well, with the efficiency that's
00:10:56
Speaker
as you could possibly get. It wasn't enough. So the efficiency of this mill will allow us to truck it a little bit further. So that cost savings in manufacturing, we can spend that trucking and still be competitive. So you guys able to put all of your staff from the old mill and keep everyone? That's great. Like you said, they like working for you.
Innovative Aspects of the Mill
00:11:16
Speaker
This is a question I always ask, what's your biggest like, whoa moment. This is completely changing the game on how we make our feed.
00:11:35
Speaker
that everything kind of dialed in and figured out a place used to using what we have here, it's going to be very, very, very efficient. The biggest like wow moment for me was to see the integration between interfacing between batching software and our ERP software, the actual capture of data back. This is what we sent you to manufacture. This is what you manufactured and I'll bring that back to home base to invoice. That's pretty
00:12:00
Speaker
Google stuff. When you see it, when you're finalizing it, it all comes together. So this is going to work. Because as you talk to these software development, you guys got to talk to each other. How do you make this work? It starts coming. You get a few glitches here and there.
Conclusion and Farewell
00:12:15
Speaker
You work through them.
00:12:20
Speaker
Those are both very good answers. My favorite answer I ever got when someone was just like the lights. I love how bright it is in there. I can't think of any more questions I have for you right now. Oh, what an abrupt ending. Thank you so much for listening. We actually said our goodbyes off the mic. So I wanted to jump in here and say till next time, stay safe out there.