World Grain - March 2023 - 48

FEATURE: EXECS SEE BRIGHT FUTURE FOR ADM MILLING UNIT
and productivity. Flour milling is
now included in a 200,000-squarefoot
innovation center in Decatur
that has 30 laboratories, 3 piloting
areas and a staff of about 300. The
facility is in the midst of a major
expansion that will add an additional
40,000 square feet of space.
Also an area
of
innovation,
the company's second pillar is
around sustainability.
" I truly believe that we as ADM
are the clear leaders when it comes
to sustainability when it comes to
regen ag, when it comes to carbon
neutral and the initiatives that
we have around that, " Kruse said.
" And we're going to continue to
drive that. That is going to be an area of focus, a priority
for us for as long as I'm in my role within milling. "
Over the last 10 years, ADM has stood out within
the milling industry for the magnitude of the capital investments
it has made in its network of flour mills, and
Kruse identified internal capabilities as the third pillar
of Milling and Baking Solutions strategy. He said driving
efficiency both by replacing older mills and modernizing
others will be key for the company.
" You've heard a lot about the labor challenges, " he
The team within the
milling group is still
new to the milling
industry, so they're
always willing and
able to question
and challenge the
legacy way that we
did things.
Tedd Kruse, president,
Milling and Baking Solutions
to partner with milling in a way that
has not happened in the past.
" They've said there's a lot of lowhanging
fruit, and again, it's making
us much more effective and efficient
with our customers and how we're
servicing them, " he said.
Marketing, rebranding efforts
With the company's efforts around
innovation, sustainability, operations
and logistics, ADM has identified
marketing and rebranding as
a fifth pillar. More than just touting
what the company is accomplishing,
ADM's Milling and Baking
Solutions group is addressing a
proliferation of flour brands that
became part of the company amid its many acquisitions
in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The company has
unveiled a new brand - HarvestEdge and has begun
marketing its core line under the brand.
" Commander and all these other brands have been
said. " That's not specific to the milling industry, but
we're going to continue to invest in the automation at
our facilities, to continue to try to streamline that and
continue to drive higher consistency of higher output in
those mills and higher efficiency. Again, to service our
customers in a more effective, more consistent fashion. "
The fourth pillar of ADM Milling and Baking
Solutions is sales and operations planning and supply
chain. Much as the company is using technology
and automation to enhance plant operations,
ADM is using data to optimize its sales and production
scheduling.
" We have a lot of resources, a lot of data, a lot of
analytics that we're leveraging to drive that to be a
more effective, more efficient process, " Kruse said.
" We think that will benefit our customers as well, and
we're really excited about that. On the logistics side,
we've seen huge challenges over the last couple of
years. Having dedicated resources, collaboration and
leveraging what we have within this building - how
we partner with the rest of ADM. We have dedicated
teams within Agricultural Services and Oilseeds -
whether it's trucking or rail or the barges and the vessel
companies. "
Kruse said the Agricultural Services and Oilseeds
group has responded enthusiastically to the opportunity
48
out there forever, and that's great, " Kruse said. " There
is value in those brands, but what we're doing now is
we're using this opportunity to streamline and refresh
those brands. That's led to SKU (stock-keeping unit)
rationalization, which will set those mills up to be more
effective at what they're doing, pushing through a lot
fewer SKUs. "
In working to better coordinate and optimize sales
and operations, ADM Milling and Baking Solutions is
charting a fundamentally different course than in the
past, Kruse said.
" Historically ADM Milling, when we looked at the
business, we looked at it with a very singular mindset, "
he said. " By that, I mean that each one of the mills really
was worried about their mill. And so utilizing some of
the analytics and the data that Chris mentioned, we built
an optimization tool, an optimization model. As we've
leveraged that model, it has enabled us to leverage the
network of mills we have to operate it more effectively.
Trying to better service our customers is the ultimate
goal. So, the more product we can get to them, the better
quality product we can get to them, the more consistency
we can provide to them, the better partner we are. "
Key among these mills have been some of the company's
larger and most strategically located, including
Mendota, Illinois; Beech Grove, Indiana; Enid,
Oklahoma; and Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, Kruse said.
" Those really are kind of at the heart of the network,
and then we have the auxiliary mills throughout the
nation that we're leveraging, too, which gives us and
our customers redundancy, " he said. " It gives us a good
March 2023 / World Grain / World-Grain.com
http://www.World-Grain.com
World Grain - March 2023

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