“Pit Crews” Keep Snacks On Track

Cheetos snacks move through an accumulation conveyor at the Perry, GA, Frito-Lay manufacturing facility.

High-performance machines require highly skilled professionals who use a race-car team approach to maintenance and reliability at Frito-Lay’s largest North American manufacturing facility.

Lay’s potato chips move up the potato chip incline conveyor to seasoning.

The one million-sq.-ft. Frito-Lay manufacturing facility in Perry, GA, operates like a well-oiled, high-speed race-car track.

The operations teams drive the machines, but it’s the 100 maintenance professionals on five specialized teams who work in the garage and in the pits to build, repair, and optimize the equipment—taking it from the shop to the track. They ensure the production stays in constant motion as it circles the refined Frito-Lay course, around-and-around, nonstop, 24/7.

Perry’s director of maintenance and engineering, Craig Hoffman, is the crew chief. The overall maintenance philosophy requires proactive maintenance and methodologies, he said. However, just like a race-team pit crew, they must have the ability to respond to unexpected issues.

“NASCAR teams spend a lot of time in their shops building their cars, analyzing, making adjustments, and fixing problems. We use similar techniques,” Hoffman said. “Our foundation is planning and scheduling, which is supported by preventive and predictive maintenance and root-cause analysis. We do everything we can to make sure our equipment is ready to perform.”

In a facility that produces thousands of pounds of potato chips, tortilla chips, and many other Frito-Lay products per hour, the equipment must stay in optimal condition to deliver high-performance production, he said.

“Our job is to turn the equipment over, in the best possible shape, to the operations group. But every race day there is a situation where you have to respond. When something happens, we go into the pit-crew mentality—it’s all hands on deck. What is constantly on our minds is how to keep our equipment in safe, reliable, food-safe condition so that the drivers can continue to move the lines around the track. We do a great job upfront with our proactive technologies. I would love to say we are perfect. When, however, you have as much equipment as we do, something is going to happen. And we have to be able to respond.” 

The different teams play different roles, yet all share a common goal: to produce millions of pounds of snack foods annually.

The Perry facility houses 15 manufacturing lines that produce all flavor varieties of Frito-Lay snacks, including Doritos, Cheetos, Tostitos, Ruffles, Lay’s, Fritos, SunChips, Stacy’s, Smartfood, Rold Gold, and Funyuns. Built in 1988 with just two lines, the largest of Frito-Lay’s 36 North American manufacturing facilities has built several expansions in nearly three decades, including three production lines in the past 14 months.

Maintenance philosophy

Doritos nacho-cheese-flavored chips travel through the distribution system to packaging. Photos: Michelle Segrest.

Hoffman’s team is responsible for the maintenance of countless pieces of equipment, including fryers, ovens, extruders, a fleet of automated vehicles (including cranes and robots), weighers, kettles, pumps, motors, instrumentation, packaging equipment, seasoning-application equipment, boilers, air compressors, air dryers, switch gears, bag-packaging tubes, and several miles of conveyors throughout the facility.

The site’s maintenance professionals are divided into five teams that cover all facets of the facility:

• • core plant – includes all of the machines that manufacture, package, and process the larger, core products such as Lay’s and Doritos
• • bakery area – manufactures, packages, and processes baked products
• • facility – handles buildings, grounds, infrastructure, boilers, compressors, steam system, and other related equipment
• • warehouse – takes care of the shipping and distribution equipment, and all palletizing equipment, robots, and cranes
• • controls – manages the controls infrastructure, all operator interface terminals, PLC programming, and IT systems.

Hoffman teaches planning classes to all Frito-Lay employees. “I always cite the example of changing oil in the car,” he said. “Most people tell you put the car up on blocks, drain the old oil, then put in the new oil. When I change the oil, I go into my shop first and make sure I have the oil filter. I make sure I have the oil. I make sure my jack is in good condition, and I have jack stands for safety. Then I make sure it is time to change the oil. A lot of people tear right into a project without having the right parts or the right information to do the job. To me, this is all about planning.”

“Another example is when you go on vacation,” Hoffman said. “I don’t know anyone who just wakes up one morning and says, ‘I’m out of here.’ You plan the vacation. You decide where you are going to go, what you are going to do, where you will stay. You buy tickets. You put a plan together before you go tackle that vacation, just like we would put a plan together before we would tackle any job. We are making sure we have the right parts, the right information, and the right tools to go execute good work.”

The work comes from the facility’s PM (preventive maintenance) system. Operators provide insight on how their machines are running. Then the maintenance team maps out a plan to restore the equipment to the optimal operating condition. When the plan is set, they schedule and execute it. “If you don’t have a plan, you have no control. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Even though it is a low percentage of the time, unplanned maintenance also happens, according to Jim Northcutt who is in charge of all maintenance and engineering for Frito-Lay’s 36 North American facilities. He coordinates the facility maintenance managers from the corporate office in Plano, TX, and executes a streamlined maintenance approach across all facilities.

“The company, as a whole, runs very efficiently,” Northcutt explained. “When we do have an unplanned event, the maintenance managers get their team marshaled around making sure they have the right tools and the right expertise to get it corrected and back online. There is not a silver bullet there. It is just really good people who work in our organization who are very talented.”

Best maintenance practices

Maintenance mechanics Mike Day and Dave Maddox oversee shop rebuilds.

Planning and scheduling is supported with an in-depth PM system, along with highly upgraded technology such as vibration analysis and ultrasound, and carefully crafted PdM (predictive-maintenance) processes.

For corrective work, the planners and schedulers go to the storage area and check out several parts and then kit them for the mechanics, Hoffman said. Then jobs are reviewed with the mechanics. “The key here is to make our mechanics as successful as possible by giving them the right equipment, the right parts, and the right tools to maximize wrench time. This way, when they are out on the floor they have everything they need. It eliminates travel time back and forth and maximizes our ability to perform corrective work and keep our plant in a reliable state.”

When the mechanics receive a schedule, it determines the location of the kitting bin. The bins are numbered and lettered so the mechanic can easily find them and be prepared to successfully perform the job.

The planning and scheduling foundation translates across all North American facilities, Northcutt said. “If you look at it in its most simplistic terms, we plan it, we schedule it, we execute it,” he said. “As a company, throughout all facilities, planning and scheduling is what we hang our hat on.” 

Other best practices include using condition-based approaches and the previously referenced predictive technologies, i.e., thermography, ultrasound, and vibration analysis. Staffing and development is also important, said Richard Cole, director of maintenance and engineering at the Fayetteville, TN, facility.

“It is crucial to have the right people in the right place,” Cole said. “We are continuously developing their skills. We leverage local junior colleges and trade schools to bring in students as interns to work with the mechanics and get training. We have a strong focus around processes and systems, planning and scheduling, work orders, and predictive maintenance. We must always be looking at continuous improvement from scorecards and action plans. Reward and recognition also plays a role in our maintenance strategy.”

Knowing the score

To stay on track, Frito-Lay believes in knowing the score.

“We track our downtime performance here very closely,” Hoffman said. “We have the ability, through technology, to monitor our line performance almost to the minute. I challenge my managers and my mechanics to always know the score. It’s just like how a racecar driver knows what lap he is on, how much fuel he has left, and how much air is in the tires—he knows when to make a pit stop. You always have to know where you stand against the target you set.”

Maintenance planners Tim Waller, Don Reynolds, and Jeff Tuck take a break in the maintenance-parts room. Planning, scheduling, and kitting parts is a key component of the overall maintenance strategy at Frito-Lay.

Frito-Lay’s key performance indicators (KPIs) include safety scores, such as the number of days the facility has gone injury free. They also measure total downtime, equipment downtime, operation downtime, changeovers, and material-related downtime.

“We have to have our house in order and provide a stable, safe work environment for our operators,” Hoffman said. With multiple changeovers, the quality could go south fast and our operators become extremely frustrated. If we hold our equipment reliability at the highest level, our operators have a very good chance to have a successful day. It allows them to focus on their quality metrics, how their line is running, and how we are holding our product to the highest standard. This is especially important when [it comes to] making food.”

Northcutt said anyone at any of the facilities in the U.S. and Canada can immediately see the metrics.

“I’m an old football coach, and I believe in knowing the score,” Northcutt noted. “Mechanics and those running the equipment from an operations perspective all know the score. This includes everything from planning and scheduling to inventory control to efficiency. Our ability to focus in on performance to improve performance makes us unique as an organization. On a weekly basis, the operations and technical teams come together to talk about outages or failures and then they step back and consider if it’s systemic or a piece of equipment. We call that ‘fix it forever.’”

Frito-Lay promotes internal competitions among facilities to inspire the operations and maintenance teams to keep score on key metrics. The company provides performance reports and ranks the various sites in different categories. There is a national downtime competition throughout the year that measures uptime and unplanned downtime. Winning teams are recognized through various company incentives.

“In this business, we like to know if we won,” Hoffman said. “If you don’t keep the numbers visible to the team, and if they don’t think it’s important to the leadership, their motivation will falter. Keeping the score is the greatest motivational technique we have in this business. Talk to any of my mechanics, they will tell you that I’m all about watching the downtime numbers with a goal of minimal downtime.”

The Fayetteville site’s Richard Cole pointed out that the friendly competitive challenges across facilities are motivational, but the teams also remember they are ultimately on the same side. Successful new processes and systems are shared across sites and the camaraderie that develops is strong. Support is given throughout the company, whether it’s hands-on, directional, or coaching to help personnel at all Frito-Lay sites improve performance.

Keeping up with new technology

Maintenance mechanic Fred Luther uses ultrasound technology as part of routine predictive maintenance.

Because Perry is the largest, most complex Frito-Lay facility, it has become the test site for new technology.

“If there is a new piece of equipment, we have very close contact with corporate engineering and our research-and-development team. They want to bring it here and let us try to help make it successful or let us cut our teeth on it and prove it before we deploy it to other facilities,” Hoffman said.

The Perry facility also has technically apt teams. “We are blessed with some of the most highly skilled maintenance and technology professionals in the company,” he added. “So we get all the new toys. It’s kind of cool. It challenges us.”

The teams go through rigorous training with the equipment vendors and supplement it with training at local technical schools. They also solicit other vendors and suppliers to provide training programs and classes on new technology.

Leveraging improvement, energy, and reliability

According to Hoffman, many different facets of continuous improvement are introduced at the Perry site and throughout all Frito-Lay operations. Through root-cause analysis, issues are engineered to avoid repeat failures, and improvement programs are launched to upgrade or harden pieces of equipment to increase reliability.

The team also troubleshoots how to reduce utility consumption while maintaining reliability. They study how to reduce parts costs and the overall cost of making the product.

“Our primary focus in the reliability business is just that…how do we become more reliable?” Hoffman said. “A lot of continuous improvement involves hot teams. So if there is an issue on the floor, for example, repeat failures, or if the operations team cannot get to the quality metrics they need, we will launch a hot team right there. Often cases involve managers, maintenance technicians, and operations professionals. We’ll brainstorm and come up with ideas, call outside vendors, and find some potential improvements.”

Palletizing robots prep product for distribution.

The focus becomes more than just reliability issues. Hot teams are also formed to solve issues that surround quality, safety, and operation optimization, to reduce the overall cost of the production.

“When you have a major failure or breakdown on a manufacturing line, everything sits there running,” Hoffman said. “You are still using gas to keep the ovens and fryers hot. Electricity is making all the other motors turn, but if you’re not making product, you’re just wasting utilities. If you have a reliable plant, inherently you improve your utility usage because you make product when you are supposed to.”

Frito-Lay supports other programs, including combustion tuning, minimizing fuel usage, and reducing utility consumption.

Production consistency

PepsiCo, Frito-Lay’s parent company, recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. The corporate arm keeps a keen eye on maintaining consistency throughout its processes, Northcutt said.

“Anytime you have a multi-plant environment, you have to have consistency,” Northcutt said. “A Lay’s potato chip made in California or Canada has to taste the same as the ones produced in Georgia. One thing we did well many years ago was rolling out and making sure everyone had the same tools, the same CMMS, the same inventory control, and the same purchasing process. We rolled out ultrasound as our primary condition-based tool. Consistency from one site to the other is something that becomes really important. We make sure to have consistent applications and then everyone is on the same playbook.”

Frito-Lay Fayetteville Facility Earns Maintenance Excellence Award

The Foundation for Industrial Maintenance Excellence (FIME) organization is dedicated to the recognition of maintenance and reliability as a profession. FIME sponsors the North American Maintenance Excellence (NAME) Award, which is an annual program that recognizes North American organizations that excel in performing the maintenance process to enable operational excellence.

Frito-Lay’s Fayetteville, TN, site was the recipient of the prestigious award in 2011.

Jim Northcutt and Richard Cole were heavily involved in fulfilling the stringent requirements to achieve this honor.

“Jim and I are constantly looking outside of Frito-Lay to study industry trends and best maintenance and manufacturing practices,” Cole said. “It’s important to have opportunities to see what other companies are doing and research new technologies to bring back to the organization.”

Through the NAME Award process and also finding industry partners, including the Univ. of Tennessee Reliability and Maintenance Center and organizations such as SMRP, Frito-Lay has been able to connect with various colleagues to benchmark performance.

“We like to challenge ourselves to find out how good we can possibly be,” Cole said. “This benefits our own culture, as well as the entire American manufacturing culture.”

During the lengthy application and selection process for the NAME award, Cole worked closely with Northcutt at the corporate level to see how the Fayetteville site stacked up as a world-class manufacturing facility.

FIME sends four to five technical experts to assess the site in many different categories for a week. “They then give assessment and let you know how you perform and where you need to improve” Cole said. “Our processes, systems, teams, skills, and leadership hit this high level, so we were recognized for the award.”

Frito-Lay was then able to use the Fayetteville site as an example for its other facilities.

The objectives of the NAME Award, which was established in 1991 as a nonprofit, are to:

• • Increase the awareness of maintenance as a competitive edge in cost, quality, reliability, service, and equipment performance.
• • Identify industry leaders, along with potential or future leaders, and highlight best practices in maintenance management.
• • Share successful maintenance strategies and the benefits derived from implementation.
• • Understand the need for managing change and stages of development to achieve maintenance and reliability excellence.
• • Enable operational excellence.

Winners of the NAME award are site-specific. Some years there are no winners and some years there are two or three winners. It’s a rigorous process, but those who qualify earn the award.