Each morning, Jason Glade arrives at Taffy Town ready to make someone’s day a little brighter. Candy has a way of making that task easier, of course, but for Glade, the sweetest part is seeing something he created spark joy in someone else. That moment, he says, is impossible not to smile at.
Still, ensuring that joy is felt inside the factory is just as important as delivering it to customers. Even with a century of tradition behind them, Glade, President of Taffy Town, and his team refuse to rely on “the way we’ve always done it.” As demand grew and expectations from national retailers increased, the Utah-based candy maker faced a critical challenge: keep up with growth without placing more physical strain on employees.
That’s why earlier this year, the Utah-based candy company deployed end-of-line automation for the first time. The results exceeded expectations.
Sweet Results: 5.5 Million Pounds Automated and Counting
“We had been looking into automated palletizing for a while,” Glade said. “But there’s the capital cost to get into [automation], and not only that, to purchase it, maintain it, and operate it. All of those things are a big learning curve when you’re starting your journey into robots.”
It’s a barrier many manufacturers face, but Taffy Town found a reliable path forward with Formic.
Formic’s Full Service Automation model removed those barriers with a no-CapEx, fully supported approach. “We don’t have to set up the system, we don’t have to program it, and we don’t have to maintain it,” Glade said. “It allows us to see if palletizing automation is a good fit for us: low risk, high upside.”
Deployment was faster than expected. After scoping, design reviews, and a 3D layout simulation, installation took only a few days.
And the impact has been significant. Since going live, the system has:
- Handled 5.5 million pounds of taffy
- Stacked more than 279,000 cases
- Built nearly 4,300 pallets
- Reallocated a full-time palletizer role to more valuable work
“We decided to automate with Formic because it was the best solution to meet our safety needs and improve efficiency on the line,” Glade said.
Protecting Their Team, Not Replacing Them
A common concern with automation is how employees will react, which was something Glade and Production Manager Adam Allgaier addressed head-on.
“People can be skeptical at first,” Glade said. “They’re thinking, ‘Does this mean that I’m going to lose my job?”
Instead, the Taffy Town team brought their employees into the conversation surrounding automation and how it was going to benefit their safety and productivity.
“We stressed to our team that we’re going to save time and money on this, and move you to work on a task that a robot can’t do,” Glade explained.
Allgaier added that deploying automation was going to eliminate strain, not jobs. “Before we brought on Formic’s system, we had a person basically designated to be a palletizer. Now, we’ve relocated that person to somewhere else in our facility. The robot’s doing the straining work now, not the employee.”
Glade shared his advice for manufacturing leaders in his position who want to ensure their employees are fully on board with automation: be transparent.
A Sticky Situation: When Challenges Come Up, Support Matters
When implementing new technology, unexpected challenges can surface. Shortly after deployment, the Taffy Town team noticed a problem: While they’d moved their employee designated to palletize further upstream, an employee was still needed to manually watch labels and tape boxes, adding a repetitive task instead of removing one.
Because the system was deployed under Formic’s Full Service model, support stepped in immediately. Formic’s engineers identified that the automated case taper wasn’t communicating correctly and reprogrammed the labeler, even though it wasn’t a Formic machine.
“With Formic, we knew immediately that we had support,” Glade said.
Full Service Automation includes 24/7 technical support, proactive maintenance, and system uptime accountability, ensuring the system performs at contracted levels.
Looking Ahead: More Automation to Come
With the success of automated palletizing, Taffy Town plans to expand automation to case packing next, continuing their strategy of thoughtful modernization that supports their workforce and fuels growth.
For Glade, the ongoing partnership with Formic is what makes future automation not just possible, but exciting.
Ready to get started on your automation journey and succeed? Get a copy of “Automate NOW” and learn from manufacturing success stories like Taffy Town and build your automation roadmap.