Old School Meets New School At Polar | How a 140-year-old company stays ahead of the curve
Chris Crowley knows soda. And tea, and juice and water. I shouldn’t be surprised. He is the senior vice president and treasurer and a member of the fourth generation of his family to own Polar Beverages in Worcester.
But during a recent visit to Polar’s Worcester plant, I was impressed by the completeness of Crowley’s knowledge. Not only has he done every job in the place, he still can. His office is in the manufacturing facility and he knows the name of every employee, some of whom have spent entire careers there.
Crowley knows the science of formulating soda recipes, how to cobble together machines in the production line in order to squeeze every last second of service out of them and how to deal with some of the industry’s toughest competitors and customers.
Lean And Mean
What drew me to Polar, though, was a conversation I had with Crowley about the company’s productivity, a subject he is enthusiastic about.
“This should be running a lot faster than it is,” he said of one production line, as we toured the plant. But the bottling machinery was having a bit of a tough time with the level of dissolved oxygen in the water, he explained.
At other points, he could proudly watch as new equipment made the old plant look downright low-tech. A new labeling line, for example, is positioned right next to an ancient one that is still in use. The new one is lightning fast, compact and relatively quiet. The old one might as well be powered by coal.
But Crowley said Polar doesn’t waste anything. That old machine, while ancient, works well, and most important, reliably. For a company Polar’s size that must operate 24/7 to compete in an industry that affords very narrow margins, downtime is the enemy.
The company’s newest piece of equipment is a bottling line for water jugs, the type you might find in an office.
The line takes in empty, used jugs, removes the old plastic caps, sanitizes them, refills them, re-caps them and sends them on their way four times faster than the line it replaced.
On the old line, simply removing the stubborn caps from the used jugs was a four-man job, Crowley explained.
For Polar, there’s always room to be faster and more efficient. A lot of that is the result of the company’s investment in technology and its efficient use of its workforce.
There’s a reason the brand new labeling machine and the ancient one are right next to each other. The same person runs them and others in the same vicinity.
“We don’t have people just standing in front of one machine pressing a button all day,” Crowley said. Instead, employees are cross-trained on several areas of the plant and are able to help out if a line across the plant needs extra hands.
And speaking of hands, Crowley’s might be part of the reason he’s so well respected on the shop floor. They’re riddled with scars from his days hefting wooden crates full of heavy, glass bottles.
All the plastic bottles and aluminum cans Polar fills every day need a place to go, and soon, they’ll have a massive central warehouse in Auburn.
The former chain factory just south of Polar’s main plant will soon house all of the company’s warehouse stock, a move that keeps everything in one place and makes it easier to keep track of and move.
Watch as Chris Crowley talks about the importance of investing in technology:
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