Analyze-Design-Build: Master Planning Transforms Dairy Development

To support an aggressive strategy for its fast-growing dairy business, a large, national grocery chain needed a trusted design-build partner that could oversee every step of expanding its production capabilities, from recommending the necessary improvements to delivering a turn-key facility on schedule.

The company hired Haskell based not only on its reputation as an architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) leader that perennially leads industry rankings in dairy manufacturing solutions but also on its best-in-class analytics practice that is defining the future of the design-build industry.

Haskell delivered a master plan that will transform two of the grocer’s dairy plants to meet its ambitious production targets over the next decade – and exceed them if demand presents the opportunity. The foundation of this successful project was Haskell’s data-driven analysis and a deep understanding of the complex dairy business, which provided vital insights into how to best position the company for success.

“A data-driven analysis provides crucial insights that are the guiding light for a complex project like this, and skipping that step is like flying in the dark,” said Zary Peretz, Project Analyst II with Haskell’s System Analytics division. “Fortunately for our customers, Haskell has become a leader in analytics thanks to years of heavy investment and attention.

“When customers hire you because they don’t know what they need to have built, Haskell firmly believes a full analysis is the only way to build the right master plan. Our team is pioneering the future of design-build by integrating an analytic approach as the first step of the project. I refer to it as analyze-design-build.”

Haskell’s first step in the project was visiting the company’s dairy production facilities. There, the team closely observed operations and existing infrastructure and gathered data from every stage of production. Peretz, an industrial engineer by trade who has been with Haskell for six years, said the team used what it had learned and the data gathered to build a manufacturing systems model that served as the north star of its design process.

“The systems model is an easy-to-use tool built in Microsoft’s Power BI that allowed us to explore each step in the production process, from raw material intake to production to packaging to shipping, and revealed how our proposed projects would affect output. Conversely, the systems model precisely showed us how capacity at each stage of production needed to increase in order to meet output goals,” Peretz said.

Guided by the systems model, Haskell created a master plan with a list of capital improvements and facility upgrades and a detailed timeline for when each project would need to be completed to meet production milestones during the next 10 years. Haskell also revealed ways in which the grocer could avoid costly upgrades simply by optimizing its current facilities.

“In one instance, we found a very achievable opportunity to improve efficiency on the milk receiving operations by 20%,” she said. “That eliminated the need to add supplemental receiving bays, which obviously saved the customer a significant amount of money. We couldn’t have done this without the systems model and the work performed during our analysis phase.”

Haskell is now executing construction and systems installations as part of the initial phases of work recommended by the master plans. Thanks to Haskell’s detailed analysis, companies enjoy the confidence that these investments will deliver their desired return and position their businesses to accomplish its ambitious goals.

“The biggest feather in our cap is repeat business,” Peretz said. “This was the second master plan project with the same customer, and they trust our partnership.”

At Haskell, we take our clients’ goals as our own. We innovate constantly to ensure that we deliver world-class solutions with the best possible effectiveness, efficiency and performance. Contact us to discuss your facilities needs.