The evolution of the milling industry

The global flour milling industry is a traditional sector that for generations has been content to create its products in time-honored fashion. However, for Miller Milling there were two factors driving change. In 2012, it was bought by the Japanese holding company Nisshin Seifun Group, which also owns Nisshin Flour Milling, Japan’s largest flour miller with ambitions to become the world’snumber one flour milling company in regard to customer satisfaction.

“Nisshin Group, the parent company, and Miller Milling believe IT adoption in the milling industry is far behind other industries and we will only be able to grow a successful business and contribute to a sustainable society by developing IT,” explains Daisuke Ito, Miller Milling Director of Engineering. “So, in reality, if we wish to reduce energy consumption and waste while producing a stable, high quality, and safe product for our customers, there is no other option than to develop the IT technology.”  

The other driver came from the market. Environmentally aware and health-conscious consumers are increasingly alert to the provenance of their food, which means Miller Milling’s clients are demanding ever-greater transparency and auditability of their products. “Food safety, traceability, and sustainability are all being pushed by our customers, so we have to move forward and keep up with these changing demands,” explains Jeff Hole, Senior Vice President of Operations at Miller Milling.

As negotiations unfolded, a synergy began to form between the two teams as they realized the potential of being able to digitalize and analyze any part of the production process where it was possible to place a sensor. “We came together and formed a single team, an ecosystem, where we set common goals by breaking down the walls that exist between customer and supplier. So we said, ‘Let’s get connected and get your data flowing and then let’s develop systems together’,” explains Cassidy.

Meanwhile, the Miller Milling management team was invited to Switzerland to attend the Bühler Networking Days event in August 2019, where Bühler announced its ambition to have solutions in place to cut energy consumption, water, and waste by 50 percent in its customer value chains by 2025.

As the owner of one of the only mills in the United States to generate 15 percent of its energy requirement from its own solar panels in Fresno, California, it was a message that aligned with Miller Milling’s own corporate ambitions.

When Bühler’s sustainability targets were unveiled, they spoke to Miller Milling’s bottom line and the demands of their customers for greater sustainability, but also to their desire to do the right thing when it comes to climate change. 

A concern for many companies, especially in more traditional industries, is how you carry your employees with you on this transitional journey without alienating staff or making them fearful of job security. Miller Milling decided to turn this concern on its head by looking at digitalization through the lens of health and safety. “It’s a little difficult to wrap your head around it, but we believe one of the key pillars to Bühler Insights is around our employees and their health and safety, and in particular their wellbeing,” says Tiedge.

The first thing the Miller management team realized is that employees lived with complex technology in their everyday lives, so the idea of it being introduced in the workplace was a natural evolution rather than something to fear. They found that their operations teams quickly grasped the potential of the new systems and embraced the new direction for the company. “The younger generation is used to doing everything on their phones, so why would they want to come to work in a place where there was no technology? If we can invite employees to use their current knowledge of technology then it helps us too,” Hole points out.

Staff working in the more traditional, semi-automated mills are required to do a lot of fairly mundane testing procedures to try to assess quality, often involving potential laboratory work as well as sampling, resampling, and analysis. “We realized that this data analysis was not just for management but for our team members working in the mill, so they can save a lot of time currently spent on collecting information. Instead, they can now spend time doing further data analysis, allowing us to improve efficiency,” explains Ito. Workers also quickly realized that with digitalization they did not have to spend hours not knowing if they were meeting optimal production parameters. Using Bühler’s digital technology, it is possible to get instant results by automating the sampling process using infrared (NIR) technology and other online sensors. 

“What we are trying to do is unlock the full potential of our employees by enabling them to improve the process on a daily basis and give them the time to do what they are supposed to do,” explains Tiedge. “By using Bühler Insights we pretty much give them the data they need in the palm of their hand via an app so they can see minute by minute if they are winning or whether they have to improve what they are doing, which is of great value to an employee.”

Under the old regime, plant operators arriving at the plant for a new shift would raise concerns about the time it took to understand what had been happening overnight, especially if there was a problem. With digital data available on mobile phones it is much easier to isolate problems quickly while sharing real time production parameters across all mills, giving operators valuable additional insights.