A Field Trip? In College?

It is a strange concept. Most field trips end in elementary school and if you are lucky you get one in high school. In college, I have attended three academic conferences but that is an extended stay. Last Friday I got to go on a day trip to Columbus. We were meeting an Ohio Northern University marketing alumni Craig. He graduated in 2008 and as our professor said he is a model alumni. After graduation, he started working at Target and for the years he has been there he worked 11 different jobs within the company. He is currently doing supply chain at their produce distribution center just outside Columbus. We were given huge jackets to walk through the facility because the farther you go the colder it gets. The first room is about 55 degrees, the second room was 34 degrees and the last room where we spent less than a minute was -15 degrees. The thing I learned most from the first room is how annoying bananas can be. Craig says he knows way too much about bananas and now they hit a nerve with him. They are very tricky to keep because people like them at different levels of ripeness. They had 10 giant chambers where one person’s job is to make sure they have the right level of ethylene gas to ripen. The next room was very interesting because it is mostly run by robots. All human jobs are unloading the trucks and putting them on the start of the line. All employees stay on forklifts for most their shift. Once the food is on the machine it is dismantled by product and stored in a multiple level warehouse. When the times is needed, robots go up, grab them and put it on another machine to stack it. Everything is processed so nothing breaks. Once it is stacked, the machine shrink wraps it and an employee grabs it with the fork lift and takes it to the truck bay. It was amazing to see how intelligent the system was and mesmerizing to watch. The last room we went it was absolutely freezing. We joked and said it was like Ada in there except no wind. That room had the same system as the other room which was necessary because you cannot have workers in there for long. Many items in there were ice cream and it surprisingly smelled good. We got to tour their trucks as well. This is where we learned that the trucks are broken into three sections: refrigerated, frozen, refrigerated. This is so they do not have to unload the whole truck to grab something in a section and reload it for the next trip.

The next part of our field trip was to Craig’s personal business. Which he hopes will grow enough to sustain him and he can quit the job at Target. Him and some friends opened Pigskin Brewery a few years ago, and it is bigger than he ever imagined. This dream would have never happened if one of his friends did not go to a closing brewery and decide to purchase all the equipment in one day. The good part of this being a senior level class, all 6 of us were of age and got to have samples. I myself am not a beer person but I enjoyed the fact that they did this all my themselves and learned the business so well. We got to go to the brew room and have a tour of how things work then sit down and enjoy a drink and some chips and soft pretzels with beer cheese that they made themselves. Craig and his partners are currently looking to expand their brew system and have bought a warehouse to move everything to. They are also going to be running concessions for North America’s first professional lacrosse field. They also started canning their product and cannot keep up with demand. The 11 stores they are in are almost out of stock and their current system cannot keep up. Breweries are the current business to get into because people want more than the usual beer and a family friendly place to hang out and drink. I enjoyed this trip very much and I want to go back. One student had to work so we did not get to stay around and try more of their selection. The good news is my brother lives 15 minutes from there so maybe I can convince him to take me.