Making candy is hard, even when the actual candy is quite soft. Jason Glade would know.
While Jason’s currently the President and CEO of Taffy Town, a family-owned business based in Utah, he originally worked on the production line doing the strenuous work of making taffy. As an integral part of the family business from the start, he’s never overlooked the hard work his employees do daily to turn out tasty products.
His firsthand experience has influenced how the business runs since taking on a leadership position 27 years ago. Since then, he’s continued to uncover new ways to improve business processes and employee safety.
“In the long run, if you let equipment do more of the hard stuff and employees do more of the thinking, you’re going to have more long-term success, retain employees, and ultimately just put out a better product,” Jason said.
More Engaged Employees = A Better Product
This continuous improvement mindset led Taffy Town to Redzone, a connected workforce solution for manufacturing.
Over the years, Taffy Town has worked with Redzone to improve operational performance and business decision-making in its Utah facility. Finding success on all fronts — including saving money and fostering happier employees — the company started considering ways to reinvest these savings and further employee satisfaction with production automation.
“We started with Redzone, but what’s the next thing we’re going to do?” Jason said. “[Let’s] use employees for solving problems [and] issues, rather than just lifting stuff all day.”
Reinvesting in Automation
That’s what led Jason to recently take the human guesswork out of Taffy Town’s operations and add automation to the company’s end-of-line.
“When you see your employees, you want to have them using their head instead of their muscle,” Jason said.
While the company had been considering end-of-line automation for a few years, the large upfront investment was a deterrent. Until finding Formic, a robot rental company with a fixed rate, Jason said committing to automation required “really putting your neck out there” and spending a lot of money.
“It’s a guessing game,” Jason said. We put [CapEx] into it, but is it really going to do what we want it to do?” Jason found what he was looking for in Formic’s Full Service Automation.
With Formic, Taffy Town has a fully supported turnkey solution without being locked into an equipment purchase. Instead, they pay a fixed monthly rate with access to equipment swapping, 24/7 technical support, 100% maintenance coverage, and contracted performance rates.
As a result, instead of having employees stack boxes onto pallets, a Formic robotic palletizer manages the stacking on the end of Taffy Town’s bulk “workhorse” line. This means employees can focus on the processes that can’t be automated and avoid the bending, lifting, and twisting injuries from repeatedly stacking boxes. Plus, Formic trained employees to operate the automated solutions, upskilling them in the process.
Jason added that while the Formic system is working as promised, if they decided to go a different direction, they wouldn’t be out the millions of dollars a traditional equipment purchase costs.
Taffy Town isn’t stopping with robotic palletizing. The candy manufacturer is also in the process of adding a continuous kitchen system to automate product batching.
Committed to Continuous Improvement
As a proud family-owned company, Taffy Town is dedicated to strengthening local manufacturing by embracing automation and setting an example for other manufacturers looking to innovate and keep the U.S. manufacturing industry at the forefront of progress.
At the company’s Utah facility, most employees who did the stacking are now managing other responsibilities. With a commitment to continuous improvement, Jason said focusing on employee retention is the first step.
“Making candy is hard,” he said. “It’s a very strenuous job. So, making sure we can do something to better improve their safety, their longevity here, and upskilling our employees will give them more education and responsibility at the plant.”