A scuffed, cast-iron statue of a Boston bull terrier mounted on a piece of wood is the symbol of the Junkyard Dog program, an annual competition at Hershey Foods, Hershey, PA. The basic goal of the program is to reward project teams that save money through the best utilization of company assets, either money or machines.
“The award is focused on the dollar value of the equipment that a team has reused from a Hershey plant, or something that they’ve purchased on the used equipment market,” says Wade Latz, Hershey’s manager of packaging systems engineering. “And it’s not limited to packaging; it could be for processing operations, too.”
Last year, Bill Krokonko, packaging systems engineer, led the team that won the award for the stand-up pouch packaging for Kit Kat Bites, a new product launched last July. The Junkyard Dog program operates under Hershey’s QTE (Quality through Excellence) umbrella, and the award is typically presented at the Engineering and Technology Group’s year-end department meeting.
Krokonko’s team discovered that two form/fill/seal stand-up pouch machines were being underutilized at one of Hershey’s plant. In essence, says Krokonko, his proposal was to move two relatively complete packaging lines to Hazleton, PA, to pack the Kit Kat Bites into 12-oz stand-up pouches.
“The hearts of the lines are two pouch machines made by Bossar that are fed by two Yamato Dataweigh scale systems,” Krokonko says. “We also used some existing conveyor systems, a checkweigher and a case sealer, too.” The equipment went into operation in July. Bossar equipment now comes from Bossar USA (Sarasota, FL), although the equipment was being represented by Hayssen, a Barry Wehmiller Co. (Duncan, SC), when Hershey originally acquired it. Yamato is also represented by Hayssen.
