That Factory Life!

Endless rows of shining pink cans, their newly-sealed lids flashing like silver satin as they rub against each other and spin in place, flow down the conveyor toward the packer.

How about some nice Rose cider on this 92°F afternoon?

Wup! Only teasing. Ciders have to sit post-sealing for at least 48 hours before they are safe to consume: The Velcorin chemical used in processing the cider is toxic, but dissipates during that time. You'll have to wait (and since this is the PacNW, two days from now it'll be raining again instead of sunny).

Can line flexi-multipacker with a full magazine of waiting cartons. On the belt below, the cartons are erected, cans are gently fed inside, and the cartons are then glued shut at both ends . . . genius! Who designs these machines? It's a miracle they work as well as they do

Ever wonder how your favorite canned drinks got packaged and to market? It's the sort of thing you might never learn, unless you worked at a brewery.

I might never have learned about the Velcorin even on the bottle line, but now I'm working the can line more often than bottling, and there's a whole new set of skills and facts to learn. And unlike in bottling, where I'm mostly stuck at one machine, I actually learn them: The can line is compact, all in one room, so that everything is both visible and accessible, which means it makes sense for me to be cross-trained and available to dash across the room to help get things going again. I'm off that ladder and helping out with this machine or that problem, then right back up the ladder because now the lids are running low!

Turncages with date code printer in between, and cans spinning downward on their way to the filler. For quality and safety's sake, a can without a correct date code is useless. Think of a milk carton without its "sell by" date: not a good idea!

Then almost instantly I'm scrambling up another ladder, because there's a dented can stuck in the turncage! Push the cans too fast through the regulator star-wheel, and the date coder automatically faults out with an error, so all the mis-printed cans must be removed from the line before the filler starts up again, and, and . . .

When everything is running smoothly, the cans pour down from the upper conveyor and pass through the twisted guides like a glittering jewelry chain rolled between a pair of giant fingers, or a metal waterfall, and our work is easy --- especially if all the other machines are running well, too. But it's my job, from six p.m. to six a.m., to make sure they stay running well.

Some nights it's like the machines take turns sticking their tongues out at us and getting hung up on something! First it's the sealer. Then the trayer gets jammed: At worst, we find a squashed, soggy carton in there and have to wrench it out in fragments. Now the sealer again. Then on a bad day, the palletizing robot knocks over a whole pallet of full cartons. A mess of colorful little boxes, half smashed, and sticky spilled beverage everywhere! And we hurry! Because this is a production-oriented facility, so time is of the essence.

Lids!

I didn't know the little orange bump under the infeed trough was a tiny engine, a vibrator motor that literally jiggles the lids down the trough into the top-sealer, or how important it was . . . until last night, when it went faulty. Turns out it's a real pain when it goes out. A cascading mess of lids inside the sealer

It's pretty routine work, but there are still plenty of new things to learn. This week I learned how to change the speed on the filler! A bit exciting, since I'm just a low-down "special guest operator" and the filler seems like technical skill territory. There's even a special computerized key for access.

Filler operating screen

Here is tonight's batch of Kona Big Wave beer, en route from filler to packer. If the packer goes down, this accumulation area can continue to collect cans, letting the filler keep running, until it fills up:

We'll have the requisite number of pallets ordered ready by the end of our shift. . . .

Bright blue cans give way to bright blue cartons toward the packing and stacking end of the line

. . . .if nothing goes wrong!

Which something always does. Tonight it was the packer. It kept either squishing boxes, tearing them partly open and/or failing to glue them shut properly. To minimize production loss, all the reject cartons had to be emptied back onto the packing line by hand, since the cans were mostly still good --- and guess who has rather strong hands from lifting dozens of six-(or more)-pack beer cartons with one hand! Care is needed here, to avoid sore tendons or repetitive motion injuries. Pride only is good to a point.

"Line down!" Well crap, there goes our OEE, or operating efficiency. This whole place got a lot more tense when they put those monitoring boards in! Glad I'm just a temp and not a team lead. The green light means that nothing is wrong with the filler, at least; it's merely twiddling its thumbs until it can run again

This can failed to seal properly. I hear it when it happens, a nasty screeching noise. I watch to make sure the "powper" or kick-out pneumatic hammer knocks it off the belt, so it doesn't get packed in along with the good cans. If the powper fails to catch it, I'm down off that ladder again! The toxic Velcorin isn't an issue with beer. So maybe I'll just . . . sluup!! Another joke here. There's absolutely no drinking, for obvious reasons, while on shift. (Besides conveyor belts, see those cut-proof gloves?) This can, like many others, goes into the recycle bin, as do the reject cartons:

I didn't plan to be doing this kind of work, but it's gotten me out of a tight financial spot, through multiple moves, and has been an interesting little ride. Still, I long to be working more in the fields I studied for. Now that I'm not paycheck-to-paycheck, fearing for my next meal or rent payment, it may be time to seek such a job. But I'll have a new lifelong view and appreciation for what goes into beer, cider and production type work. And I have to admit: Compared to multiple customer service jobs I've had over the years . . . machines are a lot less hassle, even at their most "emotional"!

A brewery this large (and we just got bought by the largest, Anheuser-Butch, of Budweiser fame), with its forklifts and hard-hats and conveyors, large equipment and all that's in between, feels less like a brewery and more like a factory if you're in the packing department. So I often refer to my job "at the factory" when people ask, or to friends. A focus on production, and night shifts, are also widely associated with factories. But what triggered my Web-search on factories yesterday was something a lot more subtle --- a simple menu icon in the corner of the filler's touch-screen:

It's the most abstract little shape, yet my brain instantly registered it as a factory. There's a reason it was used as an icon, in this case for the "Production" menu! But why, I wondered? What is it about that shape, that carries such a strong trigger?

A bit of digging revealed that it isn't just the smokestack. It's the roof! The "sawtooth" roof configuration of skylights was invented before the onset of artificial lighting. Coal was beginning to drive the Industrial Revolution, but widespread use of electricity, natural gas and oil had not been developed. (Good luck lighting a large factory with candles when high precision and production are required, and hello, cost?) These skylights are one of the most efficient ways to get lots of daylight into a building, especially a large building whose inner reaches would be far from side windows, hopelessly dark without natural daylight. Also called "northlights", they tend to face north, allowing plenty of sky light inside, while shielding workers and machines from the direct glare and heat of the sun.

Daimler factory, UK.

The size of this place!

Whether in little factories or giant ones, northlights became a mainstay of buildings from the Industrial Revolution onward --- so much so, that a linking of this architecture with a factory or similar high-production, working-class (coldly efficient or soul-sucking if you have a dim view of such workplaces) facility is probably coded in our DNA.

The popularity of northlights faded with the advent of artificial light, coinciding with the rise of another change in factory life: The graveyard shift. Today, the graveyard shift remains, as I am witness! But this classic skylight format is creeping back in style, and may continue to do so: Not only has it been discovered that --- surprise! --- people like working under natural light, but the sloping, south-facing backs of the skylights provide an ideal base for a technology that could enable our next, species-saving revolution . . . solar panels!
About twigging time, I say.

Our brewery does not have this type of skylight, and I'm in the basement, anyhow. But we're factorylike in many other ways, from the machines and the pallets of shining product stacked to the ceiling. . . .

. . . .to the pallets themselves --- my my, this looks a bit unsafe, but it's less of a risk than when the kegs tip off a pallet and roll everywhere, sounding like giant bells!

And it's a safer facility than in the days of old, fortunately. All our machines come with warning labels, thank you. Look at this fellow, he looks like he plans to ride that grinding wheel all the way to an 80-hour workweek! Thanks to our social activist forebears, I only have to work a 60-hour week, with breaks.

Aw c'mon, why aren't our machines so hellishly cool and dangerous anymore? They're simply more complicated, is all. Our palletizing robot has a sign showing you in precisely what way it is dangerous.

And what do all these cute little lights mean? Who knows! Maybe that a tank is ready for testing by Quality Assurance? There's plenty I still haven't learned yet.

One area where my graveyard shift is useful, is finagling out of social obligations. Working nights means I already sleep at weird times. When I'm not working, I want to enjoy my time off, and that often means being left alone (e.g. to sunbathe, write or do art), since I'm a bit of a curmudgeon lately. Besides, there's Covid19, right? My schedule changes week to week, so nobody except my housemates knows when I'm working (and consequently, the days I'm sleeping in). If I'm too tired, on-shift, or just plain don't want to play, and simply answer your query with "I'll be busy" or "working!", you can blame it on
that factory life!

The only thing cooler? Working in a Potions factory. Although in that case, spilling something on yourself might result in your toes turning into frogs, or what-have-you. Here, all we need to worry about is skin burns or, you know . . . getting covered in beer.

We have factories with quality control to thank for handy products that come in a dependable size, amount and freshness, like these little drink bottles. They're so cute . . . but I can't help thinking we need to really work on our downstream plan. I mean it literally. We at this facility aren't perfect, but we recycle everything we can: I make extra trips upstairs to chop every plastic pallet band I find, or to place plastic wrap into the bailing compressor. When you're finished with your factory-made product, can I count on you to be the next step in a responsible chain of production?