the customer about their exact needs, which often allows us to identify some unique needs that we will then take a look at before we finalize the release of the project. Being automation engineers we latch onto these unique needs and we get to work figuring out what it is we have to do to for each customer. What we hear more than anything about our competitive “Brian and I are both automation engineers and we both came at it from different angles; he’s more of a mechanical engineer and I do more of the programming and electrical work.”
advantage is that we don’t sit still. Most of our competitors – or at least some of them – won’t redesign or customize their product with any kind of regularity and we do – all the time.” Part of not sitting still is reaching out. Josh’s and Brian’s respective and extensive backgrounds in equipment and controls integration have made them a lot of friends. “Our resumes really enable us to pull in others – what we call “solutions partners” – into the full system,” Josh said. “We design canning lines and what that means is that the portion we do fills the can, puts the lid on the can, and it seals the can – and then cleans up after itself. But there are other things that are needed in a canning line tomake it fully functioning from start to finish. Some people need depalletizing, which takes the cans off of a pallet and into our filling line; some people need specialized rinsing systems; and others need accumulation systems or labeling systems. Sometimes these are
things we don’t do in-house because there are others who we’ve partnered with who do that quite well. It’s nice for us because we can approach a customer, or vice versa, and they know that one of their options is to order the entire kit and caboodle from us. They don’t have to just buy one component from us or a portion of what they need; they can get it all from us. They can also just go with what we design in-house, as well.” Canning lines also do a lot for the curb appeal of any brewery, Brian explained. Many Twin Monkey customers spotlight their systems on social media platforms because it’s great for business – but some craft brewers take it a step further. “When people are sitting in a typical brewpub, for example, they’re gathered together and lookingonto the floor of theactual brewery at the tanks and the whole process and they’re seeing that what they’re drinking
is being produced right there. Many of our customers will situate their canning lines right there, front and center, and it really mesmerizes people. People aren’t used to watching automation like that and it really is a cool thing to just sit there and watch. It really brings people in if they know that they can see everything that’s going on.” And it really is that everything element that is driving the ongoing renaissance in cans. “In the end it’s being driven by the consumers,” Josh explained. “The “People aren’t used to watching automation like that and it really is a cool thing to just sit there and watch.”
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DECEMBER 2019 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • DECEMBER 2019
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