What happens when you put a food and beverage industry leader, a brewer, and an industrial specialist who’s seen hundreds of manufacturing facilities on the same stage? You get this week’s episode.  

CBT Company recently invited Manufacturing Happy Hour to host a live panel discussion at Cincinnati's iconic Rhinegeist Brewery on the future of food & beverage manufacturing. We were joined by Rhinegeist’s Cole Hackbarth, SugarCreek’s Jeremy Saunders, and CBT’s Larry Hecker for a conversation that covered more than a few critical manufacturing topics. 

In this episode, you’ll hear our panelists discuss the characteristics of a modern maintenance program, why flexible manufacturing is so important to food & beverage manufacturing, and plenty of innovative ideas for recruiting and training your people.  

We also have a bonus Q&A where we cover some very candid questions around making manufacturing more accessible to everyone. You’ll even learn a few things about the Cincinnati manufacturing community and what makes the industry in that region so unique. 

Make sure to visit ManufacturingHappyHour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty. 

In this episode, find out: 

• The realities of maintaining and scaling a brewery 
• Why all processes should focus on the end user 
• Why you need everyone on your team to be on the same page 
• How a great onboarding program can prepare new hires 
• How staff retention challenges affected the craft beer industry 
• Why companies should be flexible for their employees 
• Why automation isn’t about getting rid of jobs 
• How to decide which processes to automate 
• How we can encourage more women into manufacturing 

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It’s feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going! 

Tweetable Quotes: 

• [Automation] is just simplifying the manual labor and the jobs that don’t take skill to do, so that our brewers, who are very skilled and very intelligent, can think about how to make beer taste better.” – Cole Hackbarth 
• “I think the most important thing is to make sure everyone's on the on the same page between management, maintenance, production, QA – you have to have buy-in from all four, or it's going to be a disaster.” – Larry Hecker 
• “Why are women not wanting to come to the industry? Let's be honest, we don't make it easy. Keep that in mind, how do we make it easy? There's a lot of things like safety strategies, which are intended for male-sized people, and women are at a disadvantage.” – Jeremy Saunders 

Links & mentions: 

• Rhinegeist Brewery, a craft brewery based in the historic Over-the-Rhine brewery district in Cincinnati, OH. 
• CBT Company, an industrial distributor that provides customers with products, technologies, and solutions in automation, pneumatics, belting, and more. 
• SugarCreek, an innovative food manufacturer that helps companies develop “brand-worthy food solutions.” 

Make sure to visit http://manufacturinghappyhour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.