we make it, we ship it, we sell it. This allows us to control pricing. That's best for our gas.
It also allows us to manage quality and food safety to mention a few things.
Welcome to Manufacturing Happy Hour, the podcast where we get real about the latest trends and
technologies impacting modern manufacturers. Each week, we interview industry experts that are at
the top of their craft and give you the tools, tactics and strategies you need to take your career
and your business to the next level. And now your host, Chris Lukey. Hey, what's up? It's episode
211. Today, we're talking all about vertical integration and we're doing this in the context of
a company called Quicktrip. Now, if you live in the northern Midwest, this is Quicktrip with a K,
not the other Quicktrip, so KWIK trip. It's a gas station. It's a convenience store. I always call
it a convenience store. My friends give me flak for not calling it a gas station, but nevertheless,
it is a brand with a very dedicated following. People petition to get Quicktrips in their town.
People literally take wedding photos, get married there. I mean, it is its own special place. And
for good reason, they make some high quality food there and they do a bunch of it themselves,
which is exactly what we're talking about in today's episode. We are joined by Paul Blank
and Scott Sheebel, Director of Facilities Projects and Director of Operation Technologies,
respectively, as we met up at Western Technical College in La Crosse, Wisconsin for this conversation.
Now, as a vertically integrated manufacturer that makes a bunch of their own stuff,
they have everything from bread making, milk, sandwiches, pizza. They have a lot of different
operations in one spot and it's very cool to see this up front. I had the opportunity to go tour
their bread and bun facility, which is brand new 2018. So a shiny new facility with a lot of new
technology. But as I was saying, and I want to be clear, there's a lot more to their operation
than just the facilities we were spending time in that day. And you'll actually hear us talk about
their sheer size and volume towards the end of the interview. So here are a few things you can
expect from this conversation. At the end of the day is just great hearing from an end user. You'll
hear about what the value of preventative maintenance is to an operation, how to pick
a tech partner for a capital project, and how automation is resulting in increased throughput
while creating more career opportunities for the frontline teams. I mean, this didn't actually
come up in the recorded part of our interview itself, but afterwards we were chatting that
because of the technology that QuickTrip has in place, they were able to double their production
volume overnight when the COVID pandemic hit without missing a beat. So there's a lot of great
stuff to dive into in this episode. Overall, it was just a great visit to QuickTrip, great visit to
Western Wisconsin. I was out there giving a keynote, so it was great getting a chance to check out an
incredible facility like the one I saw at QuickTrip while I was there. So yes, if you want to learn
more, make sure to check out the show notes page at manufacturinghappyhour.com/211 for episode 211.
But in the meantime, hey, let's jump into today's conversation. We're going to meet up with Paul and
Scott right now. Paul, Scott, welcome. Glad to be here. I feel like we should be having this
conversation over some cold beverages pulled out of the QuickTrip beer cave. Is that the correct
way to describe it? Yeah, I would say so. So is that the official name for that nickname people
have given it over time? I'm curious. I've always heard it as the beer cave, Scott. Yeah, I think
it's probably both. Most convenience stores just have like a cooler. Some of them have a walk-in
cooler, but you have a proper beverage cave where you can get fine. In our case, we're in Wisconsin
right now, so spotted cow, plenty of statewide beverages that are only available in the state.
But let's say we're having some beverages from the beer cave having this conversation.
There are some people out there that probably don't know QuickTrip in all of its glory, and I'll
reveal my biases up front. It is my favorite convenience store, and that's QuickTrip with a
K. Tell us a little bit about QuickTrip. Paul, maybe you start us off and then, Scott, you can add
your two cents on what makes QuickTrip special. Sure. Well, just to start, QuickTrip currently has
roughly 900 stores. We're in multiple states up in the upper Midwest, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa.
We're into South Dakota. We're soon to enter North Dakota up in the Fargo area. We do have some
stores up in the UP and a few down in Illinois as we continue to expand. QuickTrip is a highly
vertically integrated convenience store group, so when you think of gas stations, fuel stations,
and convenience goods, that's what you see. But behind the scenes, there's a whole lot more.
Vertical integration is fairly expansive from manufacturing facilities. We have five major
facilities that manufacture food products. We have a distribution center. We handle all our own
trucking. We also have three clinics. At some point, there will be a fourth clinic that comes
along. A health clinic, correct? Yeah, that was when I was looking at the list. You've mentioned
a lot of them, bakery, dairy, water bottling line, kitchens, food safety labs, distribution centers,
ice plants. I literally have only listed half of it so far, but health clinics jumped out of me.
Sure. Another notable is we have a child care center for our coworkers that have children with
daycare needs. Another benefit that QuickTrip manages for our people. Absolutely. And one that,
quite frankly, more manufacturers I think should be doing as well. It's a really impressive operation
and it's not every time that I do one of these interviews where I literally got to see the
facilities earlier today. Obviously couldn't see everything in the period of time we had today,
but we went to the bun and bread baking plant as well as the bottling and dairy line. Is that
correct? That is correct. We were chatting before the interview. You are myth-busting a lot of
misconceptions around manufacturing because when you walk out on your facility floor,
it sparkles. And it smells great because you're walking into a bakery. So
anyone, and I think our audience gets it, right? Manufacturing is not the dull, dirty, dangerous
industry it was long ago. Our audience gets that out here, but we still have a lot to do to
show the general public of that. And your facilities are a great example of that. It was
very cool to be there earlier today. And let's talk a little bit more about vertical integration
because that is one of the things that's special about QuickTrip. Because when people see a convenience
store a lot of times, I think they see just that. That's where you go to pump your gas. You're going
to get a Gatorade, a pastry, a coffee, whatever it is, you're going to hit the road again. But
you have, it's quite funny how popular your snacks are. People wait till they get over the Wisconsin
board to be like, "I'm getting a brat. I'm getting a chicken sandwich from QuickTrip." It is a special
spot. But what you were saying, Paul, that folks don't see is all of the manufacturing that you do
just for your convenience stores behind the scenes, which I think is a great opportunity for us to
talk about vertical integration on this podcast. So I'm going to start with a basic question.
Why is vertical integration the right operation strategy for QuickTrip? Paul, maybe you start
us off and then Scott will go to you. Well, basically speaking, we make it, we ship it,
we sell it. This allows us to control pricing. That's best for our gas. It also allows us to manage
quality and food safety to mention a few things. No, I absolutely saw that quality,
safety. I think one of the areas where it stuck out to me the most was I started my career in the
food and beverage industry. I was working for Metal Container Corporation. We were making
tons of aluminum cans every day that got shipped out somewhere else. But in your facility,
with milk specifically, you have your blow molding machines, and then that goes straight
to filling. You basically eliminate the cost of shipping, the logistics of shipping. Paul,
I think you even made the comment while we were in there earlier that when it comes to times like
COVID, you're not worried about all the same supply chain issues that other people were. You're
basically like, if we can get our resin, we can still make our bottles. Can you add some color to
that as well? I was just sharing what I learned today, but you see that every day. Sure. Just
to expound a little bit on the dairy, we make all of our own bottles, whether it's the gallon,
half gallon, the smaller bottles with the half pint, pint and quart. We also produce our bottles
for our 20 ounce beverage. But really, that's it. The resin is the facet that we need to make sure
we continue to bring that supply in. After that, we manage 100% of it relative to the bottle itself.
So it simplifies the entire supply chain and some of the challenges that may come at times
relative to that. Now, Scott, this is more of a question for you. How's all the work you're doing
from an automation standpoint and an ERP integration standpoint, making vertical integration an
even more powerful strategy? Can you share a little bit about that? Sure. We have standardized
really from the automation layer all the way up the OT stack to ERP in the form of hardware
and the way we deploy software, the way we manage servers in a VM environment, our partnership with
our IT folks, and then extending up by standardizing on interfaces between the different layers
of the OT stack all the way up through MES, SCADA, and ultimately hitting the produced side of an
order or the consumption side of an order start from the plant floor. And one of the facilities
we went to today, bread and bun baking, that is a relatively new facility that was built in 2018.
So you were able to leverage all of that new technology from the ground up. And Paul, we
talked a little bit about this on the tour. What are the things that that has created some
unique advantages for QuickTrip that you didn't have before? I think you listed off three things
that it's that's helped in transforming your process there. Well, prior to the previous facility,
we've been making bread and buns for for many years into decades. But from everything we learned
there and taken another step on capacity for our future stores that are coming, we concentrated
heavily on other facets of automation. So from a from a throughput standpoint, we really pushed
the envelope relative to rates and so forth. But the areas that we put a lot of concentration on
from a process standpoint was automation on the ingredient handling side, as well as the order
fulfillment side on the backside of the plant. In that location, we on a daily basis, we build
all the store orders, everything is done in sequence based on route. And we automatically
deliver right to the doctor. Really, on that end of the operation, that's the only manual function
we have where we're loading the trailers in proper sequence. That's ultimately cross docked
up the street at our distribution center. Well, that was one of the other things that I saw that
was unique, right? When when the bread and the buns make it to the end of your line, your distribution
center is right across the street. So you don't have to bring those bread and buns anywhere else,
right? You can load it all up in that particular area where you basically have a very organized way
of doing the exact shipment, the exact stores on a particular route need, it's not just going to be
a bunch of bread stacked on top of bread every time, it might be
bread, other goods that need to get delivered there. Am I on the right track there? I want to
make sure I'm describing this right. Yeah, absolutely. Every store order is unique. Somebody may be
calling for two trays of bread of a particular item, five trays of buns and in various buns,
and those stacks are built accordingly. So another key mention that Scott can elaborate on
is really taking a whole other step and leap on the enterprise and integration side that went into
that plant and the SCADA systems that are in place, but maybe Scott wants to add a little bit to that.
So relating to our retail orders, our nearly 900 stores as Paul alluded to, place their orders every
day and then we have two waves that are run across the campus and the distribution center and all
the facilities and those are transacted through our retail ordering system to our warehouse control
system, our WCS in the bread and bun plant and that aggregates the data and creates the routes and
the store orders and builds out the individual tray complexities that might be there and sends it out
and then upstream from there as a result of the SCADA system we have as Paul mentioned and everything
being order based from an SAP model, we have a mix order and a make order and a pack order for every
product and the coworkers on the floor who are overseeing the process have complete visibility
to where every SKU is on the floor at any given time. One thing that sticks out to me is people
throw around the term digital transformation a lot in manufacturing and we do our best to get real
when it comes to digital transformation on this show. Really what I'm hearing is you have the
exact type of flow that someone would want in a digitally optimized facility. What you're making
is based on the orders that are coming in so you're getting those orders from your ERP from SAP
and that's what's getting put into production for that day because you I think you were saying you
do two runs right there's a morning run of stuff that gets shipped out and then there's another
afternoon run of goods that get shipped out is that correct? That is correct. So one other question I
have is now that you have this process in place how do you make other decisions in terms of how
your process runs? One of the unique things we saw within the bread and bud uh bread and bun plant
was that certain processes are continuous right you're continuously making the buns but you're
you use a batch process for the bread and when I say buns we're talking like hot dog buns and
things like that and bread it's like the loaves of bread just for the audience so you kind of know
the differentiation there. How does a decision like that factor and why go those two different routes
and the way you produce it? Well batch mixing is common for bun manufacturing but there are groups
that do continuous mix. One of the values that we saw in vetting through all the research that was
done and so forth and arriving at that decision on the bun line to go continuous mixing was the fact
that we're fully automated from front to back and we have a very high speed line. When you look at all
the automation in place and the quality relative to the buns themselves will influence overall
efficiency of operation. When you think of bread or buns you have yeast in there it's a living product
so that product is alive until it hits the oven and bakes it off so the continuous allows us to
ensure that every bun is the same and time is not a factor. Yeah I was fascinated when I saw that
inside of the facility today. We'll be back in a moment but first a quick word from our sponsor.
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[email protected] and now back to the show.
We've been talking a lot about the process, some of the digitization behind that process.
Let's talk about the people behind the process for a little bit as well because you mentioned you
created this brand new facility with a lot of additional automation yet at the end of the day
everyone still had a job when you opened up this new facility and moved over from
the old facility. Go into that a little bit more how that plays out in the context of someone
that's making so many different foods like a quick trip. Sure, automation really is part of our growth
pattern. There isn't a project that that we take on without evaluating whether or not automation fits
or how it may fit. It doesn't mean we automate everything but where we apply automation the
inherent growth of quick trip as a whole and the growth we see in manufacturing it doesn't
remove jobs. There is always a job there. That is really another benefit of quick trip. The
investments they make into their people and the culture that we have there and the growth just
facilitates those opportunities for those people that a robot for example might replace
at a moment. Yeah, well I think one of the things that stuck out was the plant that used
to be bread and bun. You said you're creating a new donut line on that plant. Is that correct?
That is correct. Donuts is a great category for us in the sweet plant and we're putting in a new
dunker and cake donut line. Okay. And we're also going to automate packaging on an existing line.
So most of our donut products are now going to be packed in final packaging through the robotic
systems. Yeah, when I think of something like that I see that opening up more roles within the
company right now. You're going to have this additional facility where you're making more
stuff and you're going to need more people behind those processes even though they are automated.
If you think of maintenance for example the more equipment you have in place the more automation
you have in place. It takes a certain amount of expertise and personnel to manage that and
manage the maintenance. With Scott's group, Scott can speak to this. We continue to grow certain
areas of the business in order to manage it on a day-to-day basis. Scott's group is intimately
involved with those facets as well. Supporting all the integration needs, adjustments in programming,
other facets of controls and the enterprise systems that are in place.
One of the things that stuck out that Scott I think you can talk to on this was Paul you made
the comment on the tour. Actually I made the comment I'm like so it's got to be pretty critical
that your bun making line which is a continuous process for the reason of hey the yeast is always
interacting until it goes into the oven. How do you make sure that thing never shuts down? And your
first answer I believe was predictive maintenance. So Scott how are you leveraging your systems to
make sure that you never run into a downtime situation like that or that you're doing everything
you can to avoid them? Our maintenance staff has a CMMS program and they are diligent about PMs and
staying on top of the equipment in terms of the routine needs and that in turn pays dividends
long term since there's less unexpected downtime. So they work closely with operations to schedule
timeframes where they can go in and do an overhaul on a piece of equipment or something and it's all
driven through CMMS so there's traceability there in some regard too. When you're running so many
different plants how do different operations leaders throughout the company collaborate to
improve operations right? Obviously a milk plant is different than a bakery you know I'm curious
what that cross product collaboration looks like. So we have a continuous improvement group that are
within the business that works with all respective groups and areas to work on those
kind of business improvements that make sense for Quattro. One other question I had was around
sourcing like we talked about how you're doing your own blow molding and then that goes to bottling
the milk as well but you're also getting milk within I believe a hundred mile radius of you know
the area where the facilities are. How does that make it easier from a production and operations
standpoint? Well first off it ensures freshness. We're able to process milk direct from the farm
and extend that freshness to the guests. Really from a freshness standpoint
our guests aren't going to buy anything fresher than what we provide. It's not inconceivable
that somebody could be buying a bottle of milk off our shelf that was in the cow less than 24 hours
prior. Yeah no I remember when you said that it's like it's conceivable that within a day you could
be drinking milk that was still within the cow just 24 hours or less beforehand that was pretty
impressive. One other question I have is you make ship and sell around 80% of your own branded
products right so that's the strong majority of it but it's not everything. How do you decide
what to produce and what to outsource and is there a roadmap to be like hey we outsource this today
but we might be making that on our own soon as well? Sure well really volume drives that
with great volumes it improves the opportunity for producing those products in-house.
Another question I have around the volume and just the sheer amount of stuff you do this is more
of a technology and innovation question and Scott I think it would be great to have you
answer this one first. How does technology allow you to operate effectively as a company that
manufactures so many different things? Everything we do in terms of technology for food safety
is built around food safety doctrine and policies that are either government regulated at federal
level or state level and then interpreted within our campus by our quality teams and then we
build out a model based on that and try and deploy that accordingly across all areas in a similar
fashion so if you're looking at for example a genealogy or track and trace report from one facility
it has a similar look and feel to an entirely different product from a different facility
by following the the food safety requirements. Well I'm glad you touched on food safety because
another question I wanted to ask you was quick trip also and correct me if I'm wrong you have a
food innovation team? Yeah we have an R&D team that works broadly with several different areas
within quick trip from retail to operations to quality assurance projects as well as they
work on solutions that may be a potential addition to the portfolio there of vertical
integration. How do you work with them to make sure quality everything you mentioned
makes a lot of sense but I also as someone that was an engineering student a long time ago that
didn't always think about manufacturability when I was designing something that wasn't
necessarily the first thought in my mind how do you collaborate with the food innovation team to
make sure their ideas are practical from a manufacturer ability standpoint? We start with
finding a vendor or an equipment manufacturer that offers the equipment to produce whatever
product it is we put in a sous vide line for example for folks who don't know what sous vide is it's
cooking in a water bath in a sealed bag we did that at a large scale but neither Paul nor I had
any experience with sous vide before we put that in so we found the right partner that helped us get
through that and now we have a sous vide capacity capability within one of our facilities. So maybe
to expand a little bit more we spend a lot of time attending different trade shows conferences
PR is a big deal we may have not the right relationships or knowledge of certain OEMs
for example however we've got enough connection out there in the field that other OEMs will
point us in certain directions that will research. The travels depending on the scope of the project
can be somewhat of a scale as an example you mentioned Brett and Bunn I think remembering back
we probably traveled as a group to 26 different locations around the U.S., Canada as well as
Europe just vetting through companies solutions technology the gamut a whole lot of work that
was into that to ultimately determine best decisions relative to overall design.
Yeah and another part of the story that sticks out was when we were talking about this inside
of the plant I was looking around I'm like okay so you're your only customer right the stuff you
make is going to a quick trip store so you have a very unique competitive position based on being
vertically integrated in that you can share best practices with other manufacturers because
you're out here doing your own thing. To an extent a quick trips also involved with various
share groups where a lot of information is shared across the board but back to that point
it makes it a little easier for our OEMs to get into some of their other customers for example
sticking with the same example on Brett and Bunn's we were in a number of different locations
around the country very large producers and learning best methods but also learning what not to do.
Next round of our interview is coming up right after a word from our sponsor.
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And now back to today's episode.
Do you have advice to other manufacturers that might be thinking it's like,
huh you know we've thought about vertically integrating for a while or we've thought about
taking on this other process in-house. I mean what advice would you share for folks that
might be entertaining that journey. I don't know how many folks out there are thinking of doing
that but is there a tip you'd give to the audience? Well first off it doesn't necessarily come cheap
so there's investment considerations and so forth. It's also the co-workers, the personnel,
are the right people in the right place that can help support those ventures.
I would add open-mindedness too so what Paul and I have dealt with over the years is
you have a group of people with a lot of experience and they've always done it this way
and why change things if it's always worked this way. Well we come in and explore other
opportunities with different manufacturers or different process types and have improved things
along the way. If I may I think really the biggest key there is the commitment level from the owners.
If you have ownership that is thoroughly committed to vertical integration that's really where it
starts and we have that employee as a quick trip. One of our core values in fact is innovation.
Let me ask this as well because I see where you have to have leadership that's bought in
on that strategy. On the flip side do you frequently source ideas from the folks on
like the front line on the plant floor doing the packaging? What process are in place to
make sure the folks that are experiencing packaging and seeing things go through the
continuous and batch baking processes every day are getting their voices heard and contributing
to that innovation as well. You know with the culture that's in place at Quick Trip there's
a whole lot of communication and open discussion and that really starts at the top and it cascades
all the way through the organization at every level. When we look at specific projects it's our
standard to build a project core team specific to the application or the project and the scope of
the project. On average we may be assembling core teams that are anywhere from eight to maybe 1112
people and that ranges from the director of the operation that the project resides to quality
assurance to controls and automation and the OT group to floor managers and supervisors.
Maintenance is an automatic there isn't a project we don't do without maintenance involved.
That's just the core team but beyond that when we get to certain points within that
project exercise or planning effort we're engaging many other people as required so
communications really an important part of getting things right and listening to your people.
Yeah I think one of the things that stuck out in that answer was you started with culture and
I'm curious you know you have you have a strong brand you have a strong culture what strategies
or programs do you have in place that attract and retain talent here in western Wisconsin we're
kind of going beyond the four walls of Quick Trip a little bit here but how are you bringing that
talent here getting that talent to stay in this region. Sure our talent operations group also
has a recruiting group that is an expert in all facets of the business. Quick Trip is involved
with all kinds of social media programs. Pay and benefits programs are attractive you know
they're always reviewing area industry and ensuring we're competitive there. Yep and Quick
Trip has a 40% profit sharing program. Oh okay. So our owners share 40% of net profits with the
co-workers and that really helps facilitate not only retention but a level of ownership in the
business. So you've got the profit sharing you mentioned start you have the daycare you're
constantly reviewing the things that are there how does training play into this as well I think
it's a fitting question because we're sitting here at the local technical college you know how
does training fit into your retention strategy training upskilling and are there things you do
to collaborate with western technical college that contribute to that as well. Sure well specific
to WTC and some other areas we do have internships and apprenticeships in place that through those
partnerships students are learning their trade to come within the school system but they're also
getting real life experiences working with the teams at Quick Trip in specific roles. Yeah and
growth opportunities so for example we have four automation engineers and all four of them came
through this program at WTC and so they have advanced from maintenance and shown interest in
automation and then stepped into the automation engineering role. So you have the you have the
proof right inside of the facility of how these programs have not only gotten people into roles
but advanced their careers as well. One other question I have before we wrap this up I was
talking about some of my experience on the tour this morning can you each share what it's like when
someone steps foot into your manufacturing facility for the first time. I shared what my
impression was I'd love to hear kind of what you get to see on a regular basis when you're
bringing people there for a tour. Scott maybe if you want to lead us off on this one and then Paul
will have you wrap us up. I would say most people familiar with Quick Trip aren't familiar with our
vertical integration model so the manufacturing capabilities we have right here in the lacrosse
area our world class the bread and bun facility you toured today was the most day-to-the-art advanced
manufacturing bakery in the world at one time and for someone to walk into lacrosse Wisconsin
bakery and and see the robotics and the level of integration we have is usually a surprise.
Yeah yeah Paul what would you add to that. I would say one of the things that immediately stands out
and you mentioned it earlier is the cleanliness and the focus on quality I'd also say that we've
received a lot of feedback that the interaction and just viewing our people our co-workers
everybody seems happy it's an enjoyable place to work so we get that a lot just kind of adding
a little bit to what Scott already said and that is people are typically surprised and impressed
regarding the level of technology that we're doing their Quick Trip specific to manufacturing
we usually hear very positive reports and feedback regarding where manufacturing is at
and the state of mind that our people are in in that regard. Yeah you know I just want to go over
buy the numbers really quickly but before we get out of here because we were talking about we've
highlighted the bread and bun bakery quite a bit and how you have this mix of continuous and batch
processes what you have from an ERP MES and SCADA standpoint how that allows it to operate but I
think one of the things that blew my mind was just the amount that goes through there like
you do 11 different bread varieties in there is that correct and I've got the sheet in front of me
but Paul you recited these all perfectly today without even looking at anything give everyone
the sheer size of your operation before we wrap up. Okay well with bread and bun we do
11 varieties of bread we do seven varieties of buns relative to those items our bun line will
produce as many as 1600 units a minute that happens to be the hamburger bun bread we do 225
loaves a minute when you talk about some of the other facilities such as the kitchens we're
we're doing take-home meals we're doing fresh produce we are manufacturing pizzas we do soups
we do sandwiches we do burritos so to mention a few and with the sweet plant we talked about
donuts before if you look at an individual item glazer glazers we're doing about your
signature donuts for those that aren't familiar that is correct we're doing about 48 plus million
glazer donuts here cookies I think we're we're pushing that 50 million a year all cookies in so
just to mention a few of those numbers relative to dairy we're pushing 23 million pounds of milk
a month so just for some perspective there we do have an ice cream plant as well
I I don't think I'm being biased when I say we get a lot of positive reports in our ice cream
our ice cream is fabulous I should have done this quiz show style you like you like got you
you've nailed all of these stats it's it's it's very impressive not only your knowledge of all
these and the memory you have around this but just the the sheer amount of stuff that quick trip does
I guess I I think I do have an appropriate closing question then what is your go to food item order
when you go to a quick trip Scott what do you what do you typically get wow um I would say
probably a burritos yeah they're tasty I mean short of the beer cave short of burritos and the
beer cave why not just stop by the beer cave as well Paul what about you I like the cold sandwiches
in the cold spot but I have to say I mentioned ice cream if I had to pick my favorite item it's
ice cream it's a little less healthy but it's very good I didn't say it had to be the healthiest
item there I mean I I actually I don't know why I didn't mention this earlier but I literally went
to quick trip twice today every meal I've had in preparation for this interview has been from
quick trip so got my coffee and a glazer from there on the drive over from Milwaukee this morning and
then grabbed a chicken sandwich and some urge potato chips for lunch yeah it's been been quite the
quick trip centric day I appreciate you both jumping on here for our figurative trip to the
beer cave for a Wisconsin beverage in a conversation so thank you so much for taking us through
quick trips operation Chris appreciate the time cheers gentlemen
hey thanks for listening hope you enjoyed that one and man I wish we could have recorded a little
more after this was done because myself Paul and Scott had some great sidebar conversations
after we wrapped up the recorded portion of this interview you know they were saying how they feel
that they are just phenomenal quick trip as an organization when it comes to communicating and
sharing ideas new folks are impressed with their transparency the ownership the visibility to
performance it really is something that they're proud of and it's something that hopefully you
heard it allows them to take their business to the next level so you know if I were to recap
a few of my takeaways just looking back at my notes I really liked what Scott had to say around
standardization on hardware and how that allows them to deploy software in a standard fashion as well
that's definitely something I would consider part of a modern manufacturing facility love the
partnership they have with it as well also right in line with the theme of vertical integration
they talked about having more volume and when that happens they have more opportunity to
in source then finally the way they talked about their project teams you know how the
maintenance team is always included the different personas they talk about I feel every end user
aspires to be what quick trip is in this capacity so hey if you want to learn more check out the
show notes page at manufacturing happy hour dot com slash 211 and I also want to thank our sponsors
today Fortinet and maintain X definitely check out our security partner Fortinet and our CMMS
digitized maintenance partner maintain X you can check them out over at the show notes as well
you know one other group I want to thank is western technical college really the whole reason this
interview and last week's interview were able to happen was they brought me out there for a keynote
for their manufacturing week event great time they're doing great things for education over there
and hey if you're interested in potentially having me speak at one of your events whether that's a
sales kickoff whether that's an association meeting shoot me an email at info at manufacturing
happy hour dot com with the subject line keynote and with that that's a wrap stay innovative stay
thirsty and we'll catch you again next week cheers thanks for listening to manufacturing happy hour
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