As a 106-year-old family-owned firm, Rumiano Cheese is not any stranger to pondering outdoors the field and experimenting with methods to continuously enhance enterprise processes and worker well-being. Based in 1919, the dairy producer has frequently developed — from supporting the Apollo crew within the first lunar touchdown within the Nineteen Sixties to changing into the primary plant on the West Coast to provide natural cheese at scale in 2005.
In 2021, Rumanio achieved one other milestone 40 years within the making: a brand new packaging plant in Willows, California, set to double its present packaging quantity by the tip of 2026. However the firm’s management didn’t dream of this facility solely for enterprise progress — it was constructed to help the area people and create an atmosphere the place staff can develop, really feel supported, and be impressed to remain.
“We’ve a objective of being a West Coast packaging chief, and we’re on the trail of doing that,” mentioned Patrick Henson, Rumiano’s VP of Operations. “However extra importantly, we’re right here to help our group.”
With plans to develop the 50,000-square-foot facility to 200,000 sq. ft over the subsequent three to 5 years, Henson defined that Rumiano is investing not simply in growth however in a long-term imaginative and prescient that prioritizes sustainability, innovation, and workforce growth.
A Neighborhood and Future-Targeted Strategy
As a cornerstone of its group, Rumiano has lengthy prioritized each enterprise progress and the well-being of its staff. “We’ve been right here 100 years, and if any individual on this city hasn’t labored right here or hasn’t had a member of the family work right here, that’d be fairly stunning,” Henson mentioned.
Over the past 5 years, Rumiano management has embraced a extra employee-centric tradition, investing in its workforce to display its dedication to the crew. This give attention to the individuals has constructed a basis of belief — one that’s important as the corporate integrates extra automation to help its subsequent section of progress.
“We have to create alternatives for the subsequent technology in a city of solely 6,000 individuals,” Henson mentioned. “With this mass progress taking place, we should work with the inhabitants to help it. Automation permits us to spend money on staff and upskill them.”
Constructing this open dialogue between management and staff about automation has created pleasure quite than worry. When Rumiano deployed automation on its labeling line a number of years in the past, the 4 staff who labored on the road putting labels all day moved additional up the road to give attention to duties that impacted the style and texture of the product to ship extra worth. Later, the corporate deployed robotic arms to shift from handbook accumulators to automated packing, once more shifting priceless staff to extra advanced duties like slicing and high quality management.
In response to the Director of Operations, Ruben Rangel, staff who’ve moved into these new roles now really feel extra priceless on the manufacturing ground and acknowledge the advantages of automation for the enterprise.
With that belief firmly in place between management and staff, it opened the doorways for even higher acceleration on the manufacturing ground. When Rumiano introduced its plans to automate palletizing in 2025, there was no query in anybody’s thoughts that it was the best transfer. Workers trusted that management was automating to reinforce their jobs — as they’d confirmed over the previous few years.
Nonetheless, quite than making a big upfront capital funding in automation prefer it had prior to now, Rumiano’s crew took a brand new, strategic method.
Investing Capital The place It Issues Most
Rumiano’s determination to automate palletizing was easy, however discovering the best associate took time.
David Wolper, Director of Planning, mentioned it got here all the way down to the working mannequin and stage of help. Finally, Formic proved to be the perfect associate.
Whereas Formic’s $0 upfront mannequin permits Rumiano to place CapEx towards greater affect initiatives, it was truly Formic’s upkeep and suppleness that Rumiano discovered essentially the most useful.
“It was the extent of help Formic supplies,” Wolper mentioned. “We don’t need to have somebody educated in superior robotics on web site, and understanding that Formic can come to our support once we want it pretty shortly was what drove our determination.”
Henson added that the fast and visual return on productiveness and ergonomics made the choice to automate palletizing simple and higher positions them as a forward-thinker within the manufacturing area.
Above all, Rumiano prioritizes partnerships that align with its people-first tradition. “Formic likes to associate with individuals; it’s not only a enterprise transaction,” Henson mentioned. “That matches very well with our management method.”
It All Comes Again to Rumiano’s Folks
As the corporate focuses on steady enchancment to satisfy its targets, the main focus and precedence all the time come again to its group and staff — that are inherently interconnected.
As automation turns into a much bigger a part of Rumiano’s operations, the corporate sees it as greater than only a instrument for effectivity. It creates a possibility to determine staff with an curiosity in expertise to allow them to take the reins on working the automation gear and develop new expertise.
This dedication to its individuals ensures that as the corporate evolves, its staff evolve with it. By mixing custom with innovation, Rumiano isn’t simply securing its future in manufacturing — it’s strengthening the very group that has supported it for over a century.
Learn the way simple automation could be: Automate with Formic in the present day.
