Stone Brewing Co. Engineering Internship
Role
Project Engineer Intern
Project Engineer Intern
Duration
4 months
4 months
In the summer of 2018, I worked as a project engineering intern at Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, CA.
I assisted the senior engineering team with various projects including designing a new steel platform for a dry-hop tank, crafting custom safety shields for the bottle packaging line, and developing creative solutions for an ongoing bottle breakage problem.
Lean Manufacturing Analysis: Bottle Breakage
The Problem: Bottles will often shatter on the bottling line. Cases containing shattered bottles must be removed, cleaned, and repackaged manually, which stalls the entire production process.
My Goal: Analyze the bottling line and identify the main areas of bottle breakage. Ideate and create solutions that will reduce bottle breakage at these points.
To begin, I devoted an entire week to observing the production line and interviewing the brewers responsible for its operation. I identified two locations where the bottles broke most frequently:
- The case wrapping machine. Cases of beer arrive at this machine at the end of the production line, where they are stacked, wrapped, and set onto pallets for delivery. Several metal backstops that are part of the machine’s structure will often shatter bottles as the cases are forcibly pushed against them.
- The bottle coder. Near the bottle coder is a device that X-rays cases to detect shattered bottles. If a shattered bottle is detected, the case is ejected onto a perpendicular lane where the case can be removed. Unfortunately, the piston ejects with such force that it often breaks additional bottles in the case.
The Case Wrapper
Above is an image of the case wrapper. The red numbered arrows point to the metal backstops that were identified as problematic. I was only able to work on this machine for about two days, as the machine is dangerous and needs to be stopped when performing maintenance; the bottling line cannot afford much downtime.
Proposed Solution: As several of the metal backstops are part of the machine and move up and down depending on the presence of cases, my solution could not be bulky. I decided to order thin sheets of industrial foam and line the backstops with this material. While I left Stone before long-term success metrics could be obtained, my solution reduced bottle breakage at the case wrapper by 5% over the next few months.
Other Proposed Solutions: While it is simple to add external padding, it is impossible to add padding around the beer bottles inside the case. On impact, it is usually the bottles crashing into each other that causes breakage. Other, more drastic solutions might have been to change the material of the bottles, change the material of the cases, or change the packing layout of bottles inside the cases.
The Bottle Coder
Proposed Solution: The bottle coder was an easier fix. A thin layer of specialized industrial foam was added to the front of the ejector piston, which moderately reduced the impact force of the piston on cases of beer.
Other Proposed Solutions: I found a unique plastic dampening spring that could be attached to the ejection piston that would diminish the amount of force applied to an ejected case, but unfortunately the springs were too large and obstructed part of the production line.
Safety Shield Design
The Problem: According to new safety standards, the laser bottle coder needed safety shields in order to reduce the likelihood of operator injury.
My Goal: Craft a simple and easily manageable solution to address these new standards.
To address this development, I took several large sheets of clear polyurethane plastic and cut them to fit snugly around the laser bottle coding machines. I identified one useful design opportunity in this project:
- Detachable shields. After interviewing the operators, I decided to make the shields detachable to make cleaning the machine easier. I used small magnetic clips ordered from McMaster Carr that were strong enough to hold up the plastic shields while remaining easily detachable.
As my internship came to an end before I could install the shields myself, I left detailed documentation for their assembly and eventual installation for other engineers to pick up on.
Other Projects
In my time at Stone, I worked on several other ongoing projects:
- Density meter calibration. I used old manufacturer manuals and lab equipment to calibrate Anton Paar specific gravity meters in tanks throughout the brewhouse. At the end of my internship, I created a user-friendly guide meant to walk non-engineer brewery employees through the calibration process.
- Dry-hop tank platform design. The other intern that I worked with was lead on this project, but I helped in any way I could. We used SolidWorks to design a moveable steel platform for the brewery dry hop tank, which included a clever opening on one side to allow for a forklift to deliver bags of hops to the top.
Conclusion
I greatly enjoyed my time working at Stone Brewing. I learned things about engineering that aren’t really taught in school, like lean manufacturing, improvisation, and agile methodologies for engineering.
One thing from my time at Stone that has stuck with me is something that my boss told me when I was stressed about a project I was working on. I remember this quote because it holds true even in my current career path as a designer and researcher. When I asked him about his process for coming up with solutions to novel problems, he simply told me to “fail fast and pivot.”
As a designer, it is important to iterate, ideate, and iterate again. One shouldn’t get attached to the solution to a problem; one should try to get that solution to