/ Baked Snacks Giant /

When working as an engineering services provider for Fortune 500 companies, building long-term relationships and earning trust can be challenging as key contacts and project priorities frequently shift. Even when a relationship is established at one facility, that often does not translate to working across multiple plants as other facilities may already have local engineering service providers they turn to. This challenge is often magnified when working in the food and beverage industry where mergers and acquisitions are frequently a key growth tactic for many companies.

Yet, at Gray AES, we repeatedly overcome these types of challenges, which resulted in developing a 25+ year relationship with one of the leaders in the baked snacks industry. So how did we accomplish this seemingly impossible feat? The short answer: our top-notch engineering team has consistently delivered on what we were asked to do, providing high-quality work that always brings value to our customer, helping them succeed in an incredibly competitive market. Now, let’s expand on exactly how we’ve been able to do this for more than two decades for this customer. 

Building Trust While Navigating Change 

When a well-known baked snacks company we were working with was acquired by a baked snacks behemoth in the early 2000s, we knew we would need to show the engineering team at this new company exactly why they needed to keep us around. As expected, for the first few years our work shifted to providing technical and execution support for projects that the company’s primary engineering services firm was leading.

As we started to earn the trust of their team, we were awarded some larger projects that involved integrating processes from the acquired company with the new company. During this time, we consistently demonstrated our expertise while delivering successful projects in scope, on time, and on budget. And this did not go unnoticed. Using their internal rating system, the company saw that Gray AES’ engineering services were consistently ranking at the top, above most of their long-term providers. As a result, we eventually earned our spot as the primary engineering services firm for this company too. 

Since then, we’ve partnered with their team on numerous projects across dozens of the facilities, providing a wide range of services such as:

• Assisting in launching multiple new products and packaging formats, which requires a deep level of trust as these projects are highly confidential, especially when working in an R&D facility.
• Engineering new processing equipment to better meet consumer demands for a variety of snack lines.
• Managing highly sensitive projects that involved plant closures in some areas and extensive capacity planning in other areas.
• Providing construction management, installation, and commissioning support for contractors working in facilities, which included services ranging from generating engineering installation packages, drawings, and instructions to hands-on equipment checkouts and start up.

We’ve also worked with the company to manage their capital expenditures budget and serve as an extension of their engineering team, with some of our employees having access badges to their facilities as they were working there most days. 

Managing a Massive $100 Million Production Efficiency Project 

Around 2015, this company embarked on a large initiative to synergize its networks. As part of this initiative, we were chosen to manage a $100 million project to convert and expand a warehouse in Tennessee so that three production lines could be moved into the facility on a very aggressive timeline. In less than two years, our team provided full design engineering and equipment specifications for all new equipment purchases for multiple systems including:

• Bulk ingredient handling for sugar, enriched flour, wheat flour, vegetable oil, potable hot water, and corn syrup
• Mixing and dough sheeting processes
• Baking with direct gas-fired and convection ovens
• Cooling conveyor systems
• Fully automated packaging and palletizing systems 
• New HVAC systems, hygienic zoning, washrooms, cold storage, and utility distribution to equipment

Our team also provided a number of additional pre-installation services including developing factory acceptance test (FAT) requirements, site acceptance test (SAT) criteria, the layout design, and mechanical and electrical installation bid packages. Once the equipment met all requirements, we oversaw installation, providing start-up and commissioning services and managing all field changes. 

We also had to assure the customer that installation of two relocated production lines would be complete in just eight weeks. Since production of some of their fast-growing products was moving to this facility, they had zero tolerance for additional downtime that could cause them to fall behind on keeping up with consumer demand. Because of our excellent project planning skills and our long-term relationships with many suppliers in the food and beverage industry, we were able to stick to this aggressive timeline. At the completion of the installation, our team also provided as-built drawings for the entire facility.

Engineering a Partnership Across the Decades

Over the years, we’ve continued to navigate numerous customer organizational changes, and every time our engineering skills were put to the test, we’ve continued to prevail in demonstrating why Gray AES is the clear choice for a wide range of projects both big and small. Whether they are looking for support for a project their in-house engineers are working on or need assistance with new production-optimizing efforts, our team is always ready to provide top-notch engineering services for new challenges.