[Cover Profile] Shearer's Kettle Cooked Quality

Today they employ more than 800 workers and produce more than 20,000 pounds of snacks per hour. It is a far cry from their beginnings only 35 years ago as a four-person family start-up producing 125 pounds of chips per hour in a single kettle.

Today they stay on the literal “cutting edge” of technology. A significant advance over the family’s hand peeling potatoes, seasoning the chips with a metal salt shaker, pack-aging them in twist-tied poly-bags and delivering finished product in a single truck.

Today they operate out of three manufacturing plants in Brewster, Ohio; Canonsburg, Pa.; and Lubbock, Texas, with ground recently broken for a fourth in Massillon, Ohio. In 1974, production was a single kettle in a 2,500-square-foot building.

Then and Now. But with all the changes and growth that Shearer’s Foods has seen through the last three and a half decades, the one thing that has not changed is its commitment to quality—in finished product and throughout the process.

Shearer’s began life as a one-truck distributor for a regional snack manufacturer. But, said Bob Shearer, who started the company with his parents and brother, “I liked all their other products, but I didn’t like their potato chips. So I got this whim that we could make our own and make them better.”

So the family rented a building in Canton, Ohio. “We would put the potatoes in crates, we’d peel them, then we’d put them in horse troughs, cover them with water, bucket them out and put them in the slicer,” Shearer said. After frying the chips, they hand bagged them on weighing machines and sealed them with twist ties, he said, adding, “That’s really starting at the grass roots.”
The goal of the company then­—and now—was a quality product that consumers would like. “Our first goal was to make snacks that tasted good,” Shearer said. “We were able to accomplish that. The people really liked them.”

A Heart of Quality. Shearer, who is now CEO, explained that the family company has always been quality conscious. “Quality assurance and quality people are the two important ingredients to making a successful product,” he said.

Both of which, added Plant Manager Ken Brower, are the heart of Shearer’s. There is a saying that your heart is where you spend your money, Brower said. “When you walk through the plant, you see that quality is absolutely the heart of this organization.”

A heart which beats strongly through process-wide quality control points and testing, regular in-house and unannounced third-party inspections, a focus on technology that preserves the quality of the ingredients and final product, and a culture that expects the best of its people—and gives the same in return.
Having come from the automotive industry, Brower said, “It’s just amazing to work in an organization that puts that much emphasis on quality — not necessarily on payback.” Instead, he said, “the payback is in the quality of the product and the growth of the business.”

Quality through the Process. That care is shown in the quality checkpoints throughout Shearer’s production of potato chips, corn puffs, tortilla chips and whole grain chips.

It is a process which is simple in its inclusion of only two major ingredients: potatoes and corn, but detailed in its attention to producing the highest quality product possible from these.

• Chips. Potato chips were Shearer’s first product and remain its most prominent—as evidenced by the 18 truckloads of potatoes received each day. It is an amount which has doubled over the last eight years, Stephenson said. The freshest of potatoes are chosen for Shearer’s chips, which then undergo safety and quality checkpoints throughout the process of being converted into the much-lauded snack.Prior to the unloading of any truckload, samples are taken, and tests are run for color, defects, appearance, gravity and temperature. The samples are also sliced, fried and evaluated for internal defects, color and percentage of salt. Once a load is approved for delivery, the potatoes are rolled out of an up-raised semi-trailer, and each begins its journey toward becoming one of Shearer’s 20 varieties of chips.

“We handle all the potatoes as gently as we can because they are very delicate,” Shearer said. “We used to unload them with Bobcats and store them in 1,500- to 1,700-pound crates, but recently we installed a dump and flume conveying system.” The system lifts the semi-trailers so the potatoes roll gently down, through a fluming system, and into bins where they are bulk stored. Through this process, which minimizes handling, Shearer said, “We’ve actually improved the quality of our potatoes. We don’t do as much cell damage to the potatoes, so the end result is a better product.”

• Kettle and “Regular.” Once unloaded, the chip process varies by the style to be produced. The primary difference between kettle and regular chips are the washing and cooking methods. After being sliced, regular chips are run through a wash to rinse starch from the slices. This step is skipped for kettle style, with the retained starch creating a hardier, crunchier chip. In addition, in the frying of the regular chips, the potatoes are continually run through the oil fryer.

The kettle chip process is more of a batch process. The potatoes do not go through the slicer until the oil in the particular kettle is heated to an exact temperature, at which time the pre-set computer program enables the slicer to start-up, and an exact amount of potatoes are sliced into the oil. Paddles then push the potato slices beneath the oil for 8-10 minutes to create the trademark fold of the kettle chips.
Why the fold? “It gives the chips a crunchier bite,” said Quality Assurance Manager John Stephenson.

• Corn puffs. Although—or perhaps because—corn puffs are made from just “corn meal, water and a puff of air,” Brower said, it is critical to conduct regular quality checks on bulk density; product moisture; speed of the knife which cuts the proper size puff; temperature of the ovens; and amounts of salt and seasonings applied to the finished puff.
• Tortillas. White corn, yellow corn or a mix of the two are cooked in a soak tank for about nine hours, during which time the hull is loosed and the corn absorbs moisture. When the slurry is run through strainers, the hulls and any field debris are washed away. Again, the tortilla process is fairly simple, going straight to milling to create masa flour. Water is added to make a dough, which is rolled flat and cut to shape, with quality control checks much the same as for puffs, plus sheet weight analysis to ensure all tortillas retain equal thickness.
  In addition to product-specific quality checks, Shearer’s safety and quality checkpoints include:
• Raw materials – Produce is selected for its quality and freshness and incoming goods inspections are conducted on all ingredients.
  Food safety – From incoming ingredient to finished product, the process is quick, temperatures high and pack-aging immediate for all Shearer’s products. In fact, the puffs, which go from raw material to finished product in only three minutes, undergo a two-stage kill step as they are cooked twice in the extruder and ovens; and all products are run through an inline metal detector just prior to bagging.
• Plant inspections – Each week the plant conducts in-house inspections in which the plant is divided into quadrants and inspected with a cross functional team including man-agement, sanitation, maintenance, processing and packaging associates. The crossover inspection enables a new set of eyes to see things that those working the area on a daily basis can easily miss, Stephenson explained. The plant also has unannounced third-party inspections which keep the plant on alert at all times. “When you’re on that kind of a program, you have to live it every day,” Stephenson said.
•  Organic – With some of its tortilla chips certified organic, additional steps are taken to retain certification, including cleaning of the lines prior to organic production, then running five minutes of throwaway—equating to 600 pounds of tortillas.

Quality through Technology.  “One of the things that I think helps us maintain our high quality is that we always try to buy the best equipment,” Shearer said, noting the plant’s lifted trailer trucks, transfer conveyors, weighing machines, and, particularly, its optical sorter, which sees and removes defective product. As the product is quickly moved down the belt, he explained, “It is monitored by optics, and a blast of air pushes the defective chips out from the conveyor.”  The sorter reads the  light coming through each chip, discerns density and color, and detecting unwanted clusters—chips which stick together.

Shearer’s technology also includes an in-house-developed computer program for information tracking. The Manufacturing Information Portal (MIP) provides real-time information on product specifications, lab tests and line processes. With terminals accessible to anyone on the floor or in the lab, “You can view the temperature profiles of all the kettles, or the temperature range and time between cycles of each kettle,” Brower explained.

This real-time tracking enables floor workers to check and maintain quality in all stages of the process, he said. “If they don’t know what’s going on, they can’t make adjustments.”

Shearer’s also conducts much of its own laboratory analysis in-house, with continually upgraded technologies, such as automatic titrators, head space analyzers, peroxide/alkenal analyzing equipment, and infrared moisture technologies. To validate test results, equipment is certified as calibrated at the beginning of each shift. The Quality Assurance staff is also tested each month using different product quality attributes. For example, Stephenson said, samples are tested by each staff member, then results are compared for consistency.  “This is a great tool to evaluate their techniques and ensure everyone’s results are accurate and consistent,” he said.

Quality through People. With all its technology, the final quality check of Shearer’s chips is a human hand check. Checked for color, clusters and size, only those chips that pass are allowed to be packaged as Shearer’s firsts. Such human quality checks are but one example of the integral nature of all employees in Shearer’s quality process. “Everybody in the company has to be involved in quality,” Shearer said. “One or two or three people can’t manage the quality, because it’s an ongoing process.”

“Kettle-cooked potato chips are our specialty,” Shearer added, “But we have so many different operators, so many people involved that to keep the quality consistent is a project in the making. We’re always trying to improve that.”

In fact, associate involvement is actively sought and encouraged, through such initiatives as:

• Gold Star. “We meet every other week with associates from all three shifts,” said Tom Clark, Director of Quality. The purpose is to review and follow up on ideas put into the company’s suggestion box, enabling supervisors to better understand and respond to plant needs. “It’s been good because there are just two or three of us and we just see a high level view of it,” Clark said. “They are out there on the floor; they see the nuts and bolts of what needs to happen and some things that might not even come to our attention.”
• PIT (Production Inspection Team) Tests. An associate participation initiative that Shearer finds most interesting is the regular PIT tests. Twice per shift (six times per day), product is pulled off each line and tested. “We open the bags, discuss the product and grade it based on appearance, texture and flavor,” Shearer said, as well as packaging, seals, code dating and weight.
• Team Meetings. “One of the main things we drive is the team concept between the quality department and production,” Brower said. “We have bi-weekly quality meetings where we discuss what happened in the past and where to move forward.” Each meeting, includes review of all current products and changes for improvement.
•  Quality at Every Gathering. “We talk about quality at every meeting we have,” Shearer said. “Whether it is a plant meeting or a huddle meeting or a processors meeting—or our monthly birthday party, every time we get a group of associates together we’re talk-ing about quality.”
• Quality Checkers. “We have people who rove the plant who are specifically assigned to check quality on every line,” Brower said. “And that’s their only job.”
• Promotion From Within. While the company does not focus exclusively on promotion from within, selecting those with potential and desire for growth is a key factor in hiring, Shearer said. “You want people who have a certain frame of mind, who care about the product. Who care about themselves really, so they can become better people. The quality of their life can get better. It all interrelates to the whole picture.”

Quality despite the Economy. With continuing growth and accolades at a time when so many others are downsizing and counting losses, what is Shearer’s secret? “We go after it,” Shearer said. “I’m a firm believer that if you put enough effort and thought toward something you can accomplish it … We go at it, and then we get it done. It works.”

“Just do the right thing and it will come.”

The author is managing editor of QA. She can be reached at llupo@giemedia.com.