FOREMOST FARMS: Enhancing Business Results Through Technical Training

Foremost Farms USA, headquartered in Baraboo, Wisconsin, is incorporated as a dairy cooperative and owned by its thousand dairy-farm family members who supply the milk. Foremost Farms processes more than six billion pounds of milk per year to manufacture cheese, dairy ingredients, butter and other products for various markets and applications. Foremost Farms built a new, state-of-the-art plant in Greenville, Michigan, just two years ago, where they employ 43.

The food processing market is a demanding segment. Foremost Farms has stringent standards in place to ensure that what is being produced is safe for consumption. Their Greenville facility is a fully-automated milk processing plant that processes up to four million pounds of raw milk per day. Glen Kienitz, Plant Manager, recognized that in order to effectively start up this new plant, maintenance staff needed additional and extensive training to operate the technical equipment involved with their food processing needs.

In a collaboration between the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center – West (The Center-West), part of the MEP National Network™, The Right Place, Inc. and Montcalm Community College, a training program was developed to suit Foremost Farms’ needs.

Over the course of eight days, Foremost Farms employees were trained in 19 different components of Studio 5000. Studio 5000 is a design program that seeks to optimize productivity and reduce time to commission by combining elements into one standard framework. This training positively affected nearly every aspect of their business. After gaining knowledge in how to program and troubleshoot the technical processing equipment, Foremost Farms has seen increased and retained sales, cost savings through troubleshooting and process improvements and investment in new equipment and information systems, which has led to job creation and retention.