"Have a Chip"

If you think that the process of producing potato chips seems simplistic, think again. Very few steps actually happen to create the chip, but there are more intriguing and explorative levels of the operation. The machinery needed to produce the chips seem very complex. The programs needed to run these machines are very expensive and full of information that allow the machines to run smoothly. Many different factories throughout the world and each one provides their own specialty to the product being produced, but all have the same intentions. Produce the most amount of product, while spending the least amount of money in the production cost, and collecting the highest amount of profit.



(Figure 1)

UTZ Quality Foods Incorporated occupies a small town deemed with the nickname “Snack Capital” of Hanover, Pennsylvania. The company only produces, the east coast known flavorful chips, in the Hanover area. The company looks overwhelming when gazed upon from the outside and even larger when inside. The building takes up the corner, as well as most of the straight away sidewalk, of High Street and Kindig Lane. The giant company logo is off to the left incorporating the company’s colors in the supportive columns (figure 1).The base of the building lit up with the multiple flowers and bushes, as well as newly laid mulch. When over to the right a parking lot holds hundreds of trucks waiting to be sent off. The heavy double doors, needed to get into the factory, sparkle with freshly cleaned glass. On the interior of the building, pictures of the hard working employees fill the walls and many signs with the mission that UTZ tries to pursue. The walls seem plain but are filled with bulletin boards with important papers about the work week.

 

The very spacious factory provides a mixture of smells that range from the fresh potatoes to the warm peanut oil being used for frying some of the chips. The floors seem spotless and always being cleaned, the slight hissing sound from the machines and the clunks of gears grinding fill the air with sounds. An employee filling up every machine, gazing at the potatoes down the conveyer belt making sure to pick out any imperfections. Also wandering employees that do not get assigned a particular job, sweep the floor and clean off the machines to keep the place as clean as possible.



(figure 2)

I was provided with the special opportunity to converse and take a factory tour with a well-known veteran of the company. David Kemper the aging, yet youthful looking older man sporting uniform he wears every day. The same hunter green shirt with the UTZ logo on the left corner and the similar green color pants combination that he has worn every day for the past thirty six years (see figure 2). He wears a larger pair of glasses that take up a good amount of space around his eyes. Dave started me off by telling me that the temperature will not get any cooler and showed me the thermometer that peaked at a scorching one hundred and twenty eight degrees. The heat didn’t seem to alter any of the worker’s tactics, it seemed as though they have gotten used to the temperature and find a way to work through it. Dave started this job right out of high school and said he “met the love of my life and we decided to move on our own.” It is a necessity to have a job when pursuing another chapter in his life, and Dave boated about the money by saying “This place gave and still gives great money.”

 

 

Many people think that the chip making process involves only machines and robots, but the reality of it is that a rather large amount of care that goes into it. “The fact that I helped in the process of making the chips that I see on the shelves of stores and shops everywhere,” Dave pronounces as his favorite part of the job. The employees really do care about the product that they put out on the market and don’t want to disappoint the customer, so they do their part in handling the chips with great care. There has to be an able bodied human to do the job that Dave does, it requires the body to stand for hours and consequences arise if any employee is caught sitting on their shift. You need to be able to run a simple control panel and be able to troubleshoot anything that goes wrong with the machine. Dave has the headline of a trimmer and he trims out all the rotten and green spots on the potatoes that pass through his line. He jokingly utters “Without me the chips would be rotten looking and green.” Dave only does the trimming since particular titles that each employee entails. Some of the workers, like the temporary workers and the college students in the summer, that do a little bit of everything. Mostly, three to four people that have the same title and they take turns switching between breaks and working on the line. “I’ve been doing this job for thirty six years and I’m not planning on changing anything in these last winding years that I have with this job,” Dave remarked when asked if he would ever change his position or chose a different career.

The need for chips blows the minds of many. The line that Dave works on averages five thousand loads a day. Each load is stocked with one hundred and twenty pounds of potatoes. His line alone seals fifteen thousand bags a day, and with ten lines, the demand for chips throughout the east coast is aerial. The number of shipped products would be even higher if there were no hiccups in the machinery and no rotten potatoes. Dave jokingly told me that “some days I throw more away then I sent through.” Roughly seven hundred to a thousand bad potatoes get thrown out each day and Dave said that it depended on what type of potatoes come through from the trucks. Twenty five truck loads full of potatoes that come in each day and the potatoes get divided into sections in the basement of the factory. Half of the fresh potatoes are used during the day shift and the other half are used for the night shift. The extra storage potatoes stay stored in the dark rooms that the company has and used for the rest of the day when the fresh potatoes run out. These potatoes in the dark rooms are stored in the same week as they get used, the oldest potatoes used range between two and three days old.



(figure 3)

As we were finishing the tour, I noticed the spot where I was before I got to meet with Dave. In the catwalk tour gallery above the workers and isolated from the actions that take place on the factory floor. The faces of the little children, amazed with the complexity of the machines and process of the chips, made me wonder if I looked at the process the same when I was gazing over the factory floor (see figure 3). Dave and I passed the last line of fresh chips and he noticed me looking at the chips. Still steaming, from the fryer, Dave took a handful of chips off the conveyer belt and admiring the fried potato perfection he blurted out, “have a chip.” The piping hot chip burned the roof of my mouth and my reaction allowed Dave to sarcastically smirked “hey, they are still pretty hot.”