Case Study: Bob's Red Mill Provides Safety And Quality For Customers And Friends

By Jake Eggimann, R.L. Scott and Associates

Breakfast is a popular meal at the Bob's Red Mill Whole Grain Store and Visitors Center in Milwaukie, OR, about seven miles south of Portland, OR. Even on a weekday morning, the people keep coming through the doors until the cafeteria is full.

At a table near the front, Bo Thomas, superintendent of engineering and maintenance and a 19-year veteran with Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods, Inc., meets and greets a nearly continuous stream of folks carting their pancakes and oatmeal from the service counter to their tables.

Thomas jokes amiably with the crowd and shares a handarm- shoulder handshake and some quick jibes with an especially good buddy. These friends are also his customers — they buy and eat the whole grain and gluten-free flour and grains that come from the large, modern milling and packaging plant about a mile away. That's probably why his company installed Mettler-Toledo Hi-Speed checkweighers and Mettler-Toledo Safeline metal detectors. He says it was "just a no-brainer."

For Thomas, it's a "no-brainer" when you know the people and the families you are keeping safe by making sure that no washer, bolt, nut, or other metal contaminant has made it through the long, complicated trail from farm field to packaging line to the sack of flour for the family pancakes on a Saturday morning.