A tour of Donaldson's (part one of two)

A few weeks ago at the Jasper County Economic Development Organizations Christmas event I talked to two people from Donaldson's. I mentioned that I would enjoy seeing what they do and I was invited take a tour. (It is things like this that make blogging fun.) On Monday I showed up not quite sure what to expect.

Donaldson's was founded in 1915 (which means that next year will be their centennial--I hope they do something locally) by a Minnesota man who was trying to solve a problem with the early tractors. His filter was made of wire, a can, and a tee shirt, and though simple, it got the job done. From simple filters that cleaned the air, they branched out to make filters that stopped fires caused by engine sparks. The company headquarters is in Minnesota, not too far from the Mall of America, the International Airport, and Fort Snelling National Cemetery.

Donaldson's has manufacturing facilities in many states and in several foreign companies. No manufacturing is done in Rensselaer despite the fact that the Rensselaer plant is huge--over 600,000 square feet. (That is over 17 acres!) The Rensselaer plant is a distribution center.

My tour started at 2:00, and before we left the office area, which is full of cubicles, I was shown a couple of pictures that show which filter markets Donaldson's serves. One market is the filter market for large trucks. As you can see in the picture below, a truck has many filters and Donaldson's sells them all. It sells to the original equipment manufacturers as well as to those who service the vehicles and need replacement filters.

 I asked if they made car filters and was told that was not a line that they were in.

The other main market is the agriculture machinery market, their original market. Again, farm equipment needs many filters and Donaldson's supplies them.

Their biggest customer is Caterpillar.

We then entered the main part of the building, I was overwhelmed by how big it was. I kept thinking that there is no way that I can capture the size on camera. I kept thinking of the closing scene in the Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Ark is being put into some huge warehouse.

 As I was taking these pictures I was told that there were would be better places to snap pictures later.

Safety is a priority as it is in most similar plants. They had a clock showing how many days had elapsed since the last accident (and I did not photograph it).

I have no experience in the field of distribution, so I kept trying to make connections from their world to the world I understand. One of the jobs is that of a picker. A picker assembles orders. A business may want twenty or thirty products and the picker has to go through the building finding those products to assemble the order. The picker does not have to know what the product is--he or she just needs to know where it is. It would be as if you ordered ten books from the library. The librarian would get the call numbers for the books and then find them on the stacks. The titles of the books would not matter if the call numbers are known. In a similar way,  the picker does not need to know what the product is, just where to find it. And that is done with tags like the one below.

 What I thought was interesting is that the products do not live in the same spaces from week to week. Rather they are organized by how well they are selling so that the pickers' routes will be minimized. The computer revolution certainly has done a lot to make this kind of operation efficient.

Below you see the huge batteries for the fork lifts being recharged. Switching these very heavy batteries in and out of the equipment is the most dangerous job in the plant. However, it will soon be unnecessary.

The new forklifts that are replacing the old ones can be recharged faster and simply plugged in during breaks and when they are not being used. When the last of the older fork lifts is retired, this task will no longer be needed.

 Below are old forklifts that are leaving service.

All the equipment that moves things around the floor is electrical.

When we got to the north end of the building, I could not resist taking a picture in one of the overhead mirrors.

From the north end of the building we could look down the central avenue of the building, all 1500 feet of it. Vehicles going north-south in this aisle have right-of-way and the east west traffic must yield to them.

The center has about 30 million items in inventory, with 12000 stock keeping units (SKUs). It employs about 180 people and about 60 trucks come and go during a typical day. A picker needs about a month to get up to speed--there is a learning curve.

We were about to turn the corner and head south through the shipping area. But to see what is there, you will have to wait until part two of this Rensselaer adventure.

Highlights from 2014

Another year fades into history, but it had its moments.

It started with an unusually cold winter. On several bright, clear mornings displays of sundogs greeted us at dawn.

The heavy snow and subzero temperatures made driving hazardous at times. One of the casualties of the harsh weather was the Rensselaer Library, which suffered serious flooding from frozen pipes and was closed for weeks. (Posts here, here, here and here.) To make sure the problem would not reoccur, the Library had a new roof installed with several inches of insulation, so there were still posts in the summer derived from what happened in the winter.

One event that promised to be huge and caused a lot of discussion never got off the ground (so to speak), the South Shore Air Show scheduled for early July. Heavy rains made fields at Fair Oaks Farms unsuitable for parking, so the event was canceled. The threat of the event moving south of the Kankakee seems to have energized people in Lake County and next year the event will be back in Gary after a couple years absence.

I visited Fair Oaks Farms a couple times but not enough to keep up with all the things that are happening there. A new restaurant and conference center opened, along with a bakery and market. Construction began on a new Pork Education Center, which will open in a few months. (Below is a peek in the window taken a few days ago.) I am confident that 2015 will be another interesting year at FOF.

There were several construction projects that I enjoyed watching. At the I-65/SR 114 intersection a new Taco Bell opened, and posts are here and here. Rensselaer got a new solar  panel farm, though I doubt if it has generated much electricity lately with the cloudy skies we have had in December. I was hoping that they would have an open house or dedication ceremony, but they never did. (I thought that the 69K project upgrading Rensselaer's connection to NIPSCO was finished, but at the last city council meeting I learned that it was still not in operation.)

It was fun watching a new Dollar General store being built and opened (here, here, here, here, and here.) A few blocks further east the installation of a a new culvert by Brookside Park snarled truck traffic for a week or so last summer.  MacAllister began a new building just to the east of the airport, and as the year ends, it is still under construction.

The Babcock Quarry closed and for much of the year has been filling with water.

Even though no stone has been removed from the quarry for months, the company is still selling stone, though now the piles are getting pretty small.

Another of the old township schools was removed from landscape.

A highlight for almost all Rensselaerians was a state championship by the RCHS football team. It was the first state championship in any sport for Rensselaer High.

There were a couple of posts that I really enjoyed doing. One was the tour of IBEC, and another was the Dine and Discuss event.

As the year neared its end, this blog passed the 2000 post mark. When the blog reached 1000, I was able to make that post coincide with my father's 100th birthday. Unfortunately, I was not keeping close tabs on the number so I missed the opportunity to do something special for the 2000th post.

A visit to FOF (part 3 of 3)

After checking out the convention center wing of the Farmhouse, it was time to return to the Restaurant and order dinner. The decor is fun. Below you can see one of the chandeliers.

The condiments were in a bucket and the beverage was served in a mason jar. In the background you can see the kitchen, which is visible from the dining area through large windows.

The menu is rather limited and most of the items on it are produced in the area. Prices for entrees range from $15 to $25, with sandwiches and pizzas ranging from $9 to $12. I thought the food was very good (but I claim no expertise as a food critic). The wait staff was efficient and courteous. Overall it was a very enjoyable experience.

As mentioned in the last post, the manager stopped by our table during the meal and I asked her where the customers came from. She said that during the summer most are tourists. During the winter they get a lot of business from people who travel between Indianapolis and Chicago on I-65. While we were there only about a third of the tables were occupied, but she said that in the morning they had been filled to capacity four times. (That would have been prime time for people scheduling a Christmas vacation visit to FOF.) The Restaurant had reached out to hire first-rate professionals to run the operation, but obviously it was also providing a lot of jobs for locals.

After we were finished, we asked the hostess for the manager because she had offered to show us around. Separated from the main part of the restaurant was the bar area. It was mostly deserted on the night we were there, but they expected a full house on New Year's Evening when Taylor Hicks is scheduled to perform.

Off to the side is a door to a special dining area, the Chef's Dining Room. This is a more exclusive area where you will be served by the kitchen staff and talk to the chefs.

From the Chef's Dining Room one can get a very good view of the most of the kitchen. The area closest is a cold line that prepares salads and desserts. The manager explained how the kitchen worked but my very limited knowledge of how restaurants work meant that I did not comprehend some of what she said.

Walking into the kitchen back a bit, we saw the area that has the pizza oven. This area would be only partially visible from the windows of the dining area.

An unexciting view from the dining area into the kitchen.

From the dining area one can see an intriguing balcony that with a pig and a cow in Christmas attire. Two spiral staircases lead up to this balcony.

With permission you might be able to go up--I saw a parent with a couple kids going up before we did.

At the top you could see the red-nosed milk cow who was ready to guide Santa's sleigh.

There was also a small room off the balcony with a couple of desks and a table--the Loft. This area can also be used for dining, though I do not know why anyone would want to go up the stairs to reach it.

Below is the view of the main dining area from the balcony. (A better view is available here.)

Fair Oaks Farms had an exciting year in 2014 and I suspect that 2015 will be at least as eventful. There are a lot of plans and possibilities that are being discussed. Somewhere in the next few years a 200 room hotel is in the plans and there is much more that I hear via rumors. I wonder what it will be like in ten years.

A visit to FOF (2 of 3)

We arrived at the Farmhouse Restaurant after checking out the construction progress of the Pork Education Center and browsing the Bakery and Market, recounted in Part One.

The door pulls were clever.

There are two doors in front. One leads to the convention halls of the the Farmhouse and the other to the Restaurant. Coming in via the Restaurant doors, you are greeted by the hostess who will seat you. However, I wanted to look around a bit before I was seated and the hostess told me that I was welcomed to do that. Immediately to the right of the entrance was a small dining room that seated about 30. Groups can reserve this room for meetings.

(By the way, the Fair Oaks Farms website has lots of pictures, some of them much better than what I have. Try here and here.)

Turning to the left, you could see the hallway down to the convention center rooms.

I noticed that the Restaurant was having some fun with their restroom signage.

Jumping ahead a bit, as we were eating the manager stopped by our table and I began to ask her questions. She invited us for a tour after we were done, and on that tour she told us that we really should take a look in the restrooms. Below is a picture of the men's restroom.

Same restroom, looking the other way.

The women's restroom had different decorations. There were plates on the wall from each of the fifty states. (And in case you were wondering, no, I did not take this picture.)

Proceeding down the hallway, we reached the conference center room. This room can be divided into two parts, and the parts are called the John Newton and William Jasper Rooms. Each has its own door, seen on the left. Between the doors you can see where a divider can be pulled to separate the halves.

Outside of these rooms is a water feature, which is a rustic fountain. It was too dark to take a picture of it, but looked like it would be very pretty in the summer.

I asked how often these rooms were used. During the summer there is a wedding or weddings pretty much every weekend. In addition, various farm groups have been using the convention center for meetings.

Then it was time to eat.

(A comment on the Facebook link to Part 1 said that the mystery building behind the Pork Education Center will be the Crop Adventure building.)

A couple of notes

The Jasper County Public Library Board held a short meeting this morning to tie up a few loose ends before the end of the year. They approved paying the bills that have accumulated since the regular December meeting and they approved some appropriation transfers. The latter item means that they transferred money from budget lines that were underspent to budget lines that were overspent. No matter how carefully a budget is prepared, there will always be unexpected expenses, so certain spending will be greater than anticipated. The Board must approve these transfers. The head librarian told the Board that all the insurance for the flood has been settled, though they expect one more check for damaged furniture. She said that insurance company had been very cooperative in dealing with them. The meeting was over in about 15 minutes.

This morning on the way back from an exciting holiday adventure (you should be reading about it in a few days) I noticed that gasoline prices had slipped below $2.00 per gallon in Rensselaer.

Milk is now more expensive than gasoline, and one pack of cigarettes costs more than two gallons of gasoline (and Indiana has cheap cigarette prices compared to many other states). Gas is still cheaper in Lafayette.