Seven-fold growth on an automated line
A Tennessee distillery running a fast-growing business on manual operations. Three phases of line integration later, they produce at the lowest cost per unit in company history.
- increase in annual volume
- 7x increase in annual volume
- order fulfilment, a first
- 100% order fulfilment, a first
- cases a year, up from 200,000
- 1.4M cases a year, up from 200,000
Exploding business, manual operations #
Great products and savvy marketing made Ole Smoky one of the fastest growing companies in America, named to the Inc. 5000 list for the fourth time in 2023. Behind the scenes, operations was struggling to keep up.
Dan Denisoff, senior vice president of operations, joined as a consultant with decades of experience putting liquid into bottles for some of the world's largest beverage and spirits companies. He found outstanding management and a culture he loved, alongside a complex operation making hundreds of SKUs with very manual processes and no state-of-the-art equipment. Ole Smoky wanted to be a large company but was still running manufacturing like a small one.
Why they picked BellatRx #
Recognising they could not solve it alone, Ole Smoky looked for a partner who could develop and implement a complete, end-to-end, automated turnkey line.
We needed help. There was no way we could solve this ourselves.
Dan Denisoff, SVP of Operations, Ole Smoky
They approached multiple equipment specialists. The deciding factors were equipment quality, cost, and above all the ability to support a company of Ole Smoky's size, complexity and rate of growth. Denisoff had heard of BellatRx and heard positive reviews from others who had worked with them.
Three phases #
Implementation proceeded over a few years:
- Filling, capping and labeling
- Case erector, carton forming and case packing
- Automated palletizers
At each phase BellatRx took responsibility for putting the equipment together, testing it and implementing it. Communication ran through weekly check-ins and a single point of contact for any issue that arose.
The result #
Over five or six years Ole Smoky increased total volume seven-fold, from 200,000 cases a year to more than 1.4 million. Since completing the line integration they have produced at the lowest cost per unit in the company's history, and achieved 100% order fulfilment for the first time, essentially eliminating stockouts.
We produced our lowest cost per unit ever in the history of Ole Smoky. We also had 100% order fulfillment for the first time. We have good product availability, we're dependable, and we're running at speed with less headcount.
Dan Denisoff, SVP of Operations, Ole Smoky