Employee Spotlight – Seth Levine, Process Engineer
What does a day in the life at BAF look like to you?
My day typically begins as grave shift is ending, which affords me the opportunity to check with people in the plant – usually in beans production and beans packaging – about how their evening went and what (if any) problems or concerns they had during that time. I find this helpful because I don’t interact with them as often as the day shift employees and it helps to figure out what issues need my attention each day. Early on, these kinds of conversations were important (and still are) to figuring out how to continuously improve both. During my day, I’m following up on the problems from the previous evening, capturing data and observations from the production and packaging lines, and working on employee work instruction.
What would others find surprising or interesting about your job?
I have worked in both light manufacturing and corporate R&D capacities in previous jobs, both of which demand vastly different responsibilities and each often has a different perspective of the other when you’re “on the outside looking in”. Some people, however, have worked in only one of the two positions, which would understandably impact how they view the other. Those in corporate R&D, who may never fully follow their projects to the level of commercialization, might therefore lack the understanding of just how much additional effort is required to get there. Despite being more of a “behind the scenes” position, it should be mentioned that Operations is quite a demanding job and requires a great deal of hard work from everyone involved to manufacture and deliver products our customers love – from upkeep and service of equipment to operating lines manually. In general, many would be surprised to learn how different theory can be from reality in the realm of Operations.
What is your culinary guilty pleasure?
Most of my guilty pleasures involve sweets, admittedly. During the fall, I’ll often eat a lot of pumpkin and apple pie. Now and then, I’ll buy a few slices of cheesecake at the grocery store.
