Thoughts from a former cheerios Manufacturing Engineer pre-pandemic

by Kara

August 1, 2021

Have you ever appreciated the beauty of a piece of cereal like a Cheerio? Simple. Airy. Liberated. Grainy. Satisfying. Timeless.

Have you ever appreciated the beauty of a pile of 3 million Cheerios? Probably not. If you've had the chance to see so many Cheerios at once, you probably worked in a factory that made Cheerios. Or you dumped out 1,000 boxes of Cheerios onto your floor at home and now I have many questions for you.

Let's stick with the factory example. After you look at the mountain of cereal in amazement, you realize it is now your job to transport that pile into a 2’x3’x5’ cart using a shovel and a broom. When the cart is full, you take the freight elevator up to the second floor of the factory, roll the cart to the dump station, grab the hydraulic chain host, clip the hook to the back end of the cart, and press the “Up” button on the hand controls to lift one end of the cart vertical 180 degrees. The Mountain of Cheerios flows like a Waterfall into the grated square in the cement floor and falls 40 feet down into another large dumpster down below.

Your typical box is about 1 pound of cereal. Now picture 300 million pounds of cereal. That’s how much cereal is made at that one single factory in a year. Now think of all the equipment necessary to make that scale of production possible. That’s a LOT OF METAL. That’s a lot of nuts, bolts, screws, shafts, scrapers, nozzles, guides, pulleys, chains, actuators, wrenches, hammers, bandsaws, lathes, mills, presses, coils, breakers, encoders, motors, gearboxes, tomatoes, and potatoes.

Now think of the cereal aisle at your local grocery store. Fifty years ago there were a few simple options on the shelf. Now the cereal aisle is a football field length of indecision. Think of all the different options of cereal. 30 kinds? 60 kinds? 90 kinds? Each box was made with machines at different factories scattered throughout the world. Now… THAT’S A LOT OF METAL.

The 3D printing industry loves 3 letter acronyms.

My favorite 3 letter acronym from working in a high volume Manufacturing environment was “PRe" which stood for Packaging REliability. How well did a specific packaging line perform for the past 24 hours? Our target production goal was 18,000 cases over a 24 hour period. I’d constantly check my phone for live updates of the packaging performance. "Yes! The team is CRUSHING it tonight and expected to break our 23,215 case Record on the line! That record hasn’t been beat in 4 YEARS!!!" After running the report the following day, the Packing Reliability was at 97%. THAT IS AMAZING. A WORLD CLASS RUNNING MACHINE manufactured from the 1990s. Now THAT’S incredible.

My least favorite 3 letter acronym was “OOP" which means Out of Product. That means the packaging line was ready to package some cereal, but something bad happened upstream that prevented the line from getting product. So the line got “starved”. This is similar to planning a vacation, coordinating logistics, booking a hotel, booking a flight, packing your suitcase, calling a taxi, going to the airport, passing through security, going to your terminal, and then have your flight delayed for an hour….. or 3 hours…. Or 6 hours….and you're just waiting....waiting...waiting....

So what does this all have to do with 3D Metal?

Well, every story has a beginning.