I got a story to tell it might be kind of long winded, just thought I would warn you. The Tool and Die and Engineering company I retired from was approached by General Mills to Engineer and produce a production line for a new product that they wanted to produce. One of our Engineers a Tool Maker and myself were given the project. We worked closely with the General Mills people to come up with and idea. We looked at the machines they already had on their production line and came up with a simple tool change idea where they could use the equipment they already had. The next thing we had to do was to produce the tooling to make the product. We developed the tooling to make the production line and proceeded to make the line. General Mills was so impressed with our idea that they gave our company a number 1 vender status, which meant that when they had a job and we wanted it, we got to do that job. Getting back to the production, General Mills ordered 10 of our machines on the first order. We had around 1 year in time to ship the machines. 4 of which were to go to the United States and 6 were going to Japan. The first run of machines required a lot of polishing. We had to polish out the machine marks so that no food particles would stick to the machinery. We modified the marching process by the second run we were actually machining the marks out of the parts so their was virtually no polishing. Saved a lot of time which equals profit. We got a order for 10 more machines the second year. About half way through the year General Mills changed the order to 12 machines, all of them going to Japan. It seems that the Japanese just loved the product. The 3rd year we got orders for 12 more. By now we were able to produce a machine every 3 weeks or so. The company made a lot of money off these machines. That company still makes all the replacement and repair parts for those machines. I am kind of proud to say I made every single wheel and rack for those machines. Oh the product these machines made was BUGLES. You know I love Bugles, not just because I made the machines that makes them but because I think they are a good snack.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 02:45:00 +0000