The food production industry is entering an era in which individual plants cannot depend on their workforce as they once did. Employees leave sooner, often after barely a year or two in a job. There is less institutional knowledge, because much of the workforce has very little experience.
One solution to this challenge is to maintain long term relationships with a knowledge company. Liquid is one example of this type of firm, but there are others as well.
We are responding in several specific ways.
We now sell and service control modules that require far less training than modules made by other companies. If someone is likely to quit after ten months, it doesn’t make sense to spend three months training such a person; we can often train someone in three weeks.
Since we work all around the world on high value projects, we can afford to maintain a team of highly experienced professionals. Increasingly, we are deploying our team to work with liquid food plants that form a long-term relationship with us. In other words, we become a critical part of their strategy for navigating these difficult labor markets.
This is where more and more industries are heading, towards partnerships that preserve access to deep industry and operating knowledge.
