Whole Grain

Designing Grain Facilities That Last: Lessons from the Field

• Grain Elevator and Processing Society (GEAPS) • Episode 62

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Designing a grain facility is one of the most critical—and infrequent—decisions in grain handling and processing operations. The choices made during planning, layout, and construction can impact efficiency, safety, and long-term performance for decades.

In this episode of the Whole Grain Podcast, Jim Lenz, Director of Global Education and Training at GEAPS, is joined by Chris Schaudt, Vice President of Sales at Mid-States Companies, to explore what it takes to design grain facilities that truly stand the test of time. Chris brings extensive experience supporting grain facility design, construction, expansion, and material handling systems for a wide range of operations, including cooperatives, processors, ethanol plants, and food-grade facilities.

Chris shares practical insights into grain facility design, material handling systems, and the decisions that separate successful projects from costly mistakes.

Whether you're planning a new grain facility, upgrading existing infrastructure, or evaluating your current operation, this episode provides actionable guidance to help you build smarter, safer, and more efficient systems.

What You’ll Learn

  • Key considerations when designing a grain facility for long-term performance 
  • Common mistakes made during grain facility planning and construction 
  • How grain flow and layout impact operational efficiency 
  • What it means to design for future expansion and scalability 
  • Lessons learned from real grain facility projects across the U.S. 
  • How to avoid costly mistakes during construction and upgrades 
  • Trends shaping the future of grain handling and storage systems 

Key Links & Resources

Grain Elevator and Processing Society champions, connects and serves the global grain industry and its members. Be sure to visit GEAPS’ website to learn how you can grow your network, support your personal professional development, and advance your career. Thank you for listening to another episode of GEAPS’ Whole Grain podcast.

Why Design Decisions Last Decades

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

Designing a grain facility isn't something you do often, but when you do, the decisions can shape performance for decades. From laying out a grain flow to planning for a future expansion, the choices made early on can determine how efficiently and safely a facility operates look into the future. And sometimes the most valuable insights come from the lessons learned out in the field. Welcome to the Whole Grain Podcast, where we champion, connect and serve the global grain handling and processing industry. I'm your host, Jim Lenz, Director of Global Education and Training with GEAPS, the Grain Elevator Processing Society, serves as a global community and thought leader for the grain industry, which feeds, fuels, and clothes the world. This podcast brings together grain professionals from 111 countries from around the world, all focused on learning, growing, and strengthening their operations. Each episode is designed to deliver practical insights and real-world perspectives from the people shaping our industry. In today's episode, we're joined by Chris Schaudt, Vice President of Sales and Mid-State Companies, and we thank Mid-State Companies for participating in the GEAPS Partner Program. Now, Chris brings extensive experience supporting grain facility design, construction, and expansion projects from greenfield builds to modernizing existing operations. In this episode, we'll explore what it takes to design grain facilities that lasts along with key lessons learned from real-world projects that can help operators make smart, more informed decisions. Let's get started. Because most of our operators' decisions around facilities, design, expansion, equipment aren't made often, but when they are, they matter. They matter a lot. And just as important as the design itself are the lessons learned along the way. Joining me today is Chris Schaudt, Vice President of Sales at Mid-State Companies. MidStates has spent more than 20 years helping customers bring projects to life from greenfield builds to expansion, repairs, and materials handling systems. Chris, welcome to the whole great podcast.

Chris Schaudt

Yeah, thanks, Jim.

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

Appreciate it. Glad to be on the show. Chris, to get started, give our listeners a little background about your role in the various types of projects you and your team are working on today.

Chris Schaudt

Yeah, so I've been with Midstates. actually used to work here in the shop growing up, so we've kind of got a vertically integrated approach here at MidStates. My role today is vice president of sales on the front end of a lot of these capital projects that we're building across the country. And so with that, doing a lot of scope development, you know, partnering with our clients to not just build something, but to partner alongside of them and come up with creative solutions to whatever problem they're trying to solve. We try not to be a transactional company. We want to be a relational company and build a relationship that's that's moving forward in the right direction, not just uh project in and project out, but really relationship focused and trying to help them solve their problems to the best of their ability and our ability. Starting back in 2016, I started here full-time and there's a large need for flat storage systems, and that was kind of my deal back in the day. I was kind of the bunker guy, you'd say, just building flat storage bunkers. Yeah, as I continue to gravitate towards some of those larger co-ops, larger end users that had a need for a lot more than just flat storage. I started spending a lot of time understanding the operational side of those facilities and what the issues they were having. And and it was just a natural fit for me to continue to gravitate towards that and how that complements our our business as well with our design and engineering and and fabrication and then the the Millwright construction crews and the and the crane and and trucking business that we have to support all those efforts. So yeah, today I spend a lot of time with with clients just trying to come up with creative solutions to what they're trying to accomplish and bring together our full team here at Mid States to help deliver that result together.

Safety Expectations Keep Rising

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

So that's great. Good death and scope for you and both for the organization. So as you think about those projects that you're involved in today, what's changed over the past five to ten years in terms of what customers are asking for or expecting?

Chris Schaudt

Safety is huge when it comes to the clients we work for and what we're becoming, you know, there's there's a huge emphasis on safety. And that goes from planning out safety as far as you know, how are we designing this facility? Are we creating maintenance and service access points into this design that is conducive to safe operations once this thing gets turned on? And then also on the contractor side of the standpoint of you know, when we're on site, are we holding ourselves to a high safety standard and exceeding the customer's expectations when it comes to safety and communication, whether that be you know dedicated safety leads on projects, um, depending on the scope, all of your compliance with lockout, tag out, hot work, lift inspections, you know, critical lifts, working at heights, fall protection, all of those types of things, communicating daily with the client, working alongside of them, because a lot of these facilities are older and they are needing to be brought up to today's standards from a safety standpoint and a throughput standpoint, getting more out of the asset than what it was originally designed and doing that efficiently while they're still trying to operate day to day. Safety is is a huge emphasis now, more than it ever has been, I think. And it's at the top of our list for what we want to deliver as a as a result. I mean, a successful project is a safe project.

Planning For Growth On A Budget

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

So I'm sure our whole grain podcast listeners are happy to hear that. Thank you for sharing that. Let's shift into our first focus area, designing grain facilities at last. For someone who's planning a new facility or a major upgrade, what are the most important things they should be thinking about before they even begin? I know you mentioned safety. You can dig into that deeper or other areas.

Chris Schaudt

Yeah. What we see often is, you know, there's a need, there's a want, and there's also budget and what you can afford. And so we try to come alongside of these decision makers and help them navigate those waters of how do we get to where we need to go, say 10 years from now. We see the future growth of the business, but we only have a certain amount of dollars today to spend. How can we set that project up for success, knowing knowing where we want to go, but we have to start somewhere? So we really try to think forward as much as we can and plan for the future, not knowing exactly what the future holds, but what we think it is today, and sizing of the equipment, sizing of the walkways, you know, catwalks, towers. Are we putting in, you know, two receiving pit conveyors today? Are we pouring the basement for two but only installing one? And making sure that we're not backing ourselves into a corner for when we are then going to that growth opportunity, say a year, two years, five years from now, we're we're we're paying twice as much as we as we should be because we didn't we didn't pre-plan for it. So I think just setting these up for success, not knowing exactly what the future holds, but there's a lot of things from a site development and site design standpoint that you can spend marginal dollars today to have a huge impact on the future to mitigate the excess cost in the future.

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

So that's great that you're there to support them and take that into consideration. But also on the same lines here, what do you see as some of the more common mistakes operators make early in that design process? Is it not thinking maybe forward enough in growth and thinking about cost savings potentially on what you're gonna be building now and what you could build in the continue to build in the future? What what are those areas that you think are some of those most common mistakes?

Chris Schaudt

We see a lot of there's a lot of opportunities that pop up that you'd like to execute on, but you just physically can't because it's completely scrapping old and replacing with new. So whether that be, hey, we wanna we gotta fill this grain bin at 15,000 bushel per hour, and you know, in the future we want to fill it at 30,000 bushel per hour, but we're just gonna put in the catwalk and tower to support the 15,000 bushel per hour conveyor today. And what we find is, you know, if we know that the end goal is to maybe add a second conveyor or, you know, change out that conveyor for a different conveyor that's wider and taller and faster, to think about that up front and maintain proper walkways and serviceability and clearance accesses. You know, maybe you're taking that catwalk from a seven-foot catwalk to an eight-foot catwalk and you're you're spending an extra five thousand dollars on a on a several million dollar project, you know, versus spending a hundred and fifty thousand dollars five years from now and and completely replacing. So we just see a lot of short-sightedness as far as what the next phase of the project is. Are we installing a catwalk completely level and not taking into account a bin top tower to then extend out to the second bin? With that, are we considering the future incline for that conveyor? Are we now changing horsepowers? Are we changing shaft sizes, chain sizes, all those kinds of things? So on the original build, you know, if you're going from a 40 to a 50 horsepower motor or WH 124 chain to 132 chain, very minimal cost, but when you're changing it out completely, we're really paying for the same thing twice in a short span of years. So try and always think about what's next and not just build for for today.

Grain Flow Starts With Truck Traffic

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

Great. Talk a little bit about grain flow and layouts. How should operators be thinking about that from the start?

Chris Schaudt

Yeah, I mean, I think it starts with traffic flow, honestly. I mean, even before we look at all the the shiny stuff that goes vertical, grain bend and towers, we see a lot of you've got a certain facility footprint that you're trying to work with. A lot of times you've got a neighboring field that maybe doesn't want to sell and you you're trying to build more on the space you've got and and uh sure maybe you can do that, but if you're if you go from dumping a hundred trucks a day to three hundred trucks a day or you know, five hundred to eight hundred, there's that many more trucks to get through, and you can have the speed to unload them and the space to fill it. But if you haven't thought about inbound and outbound truck scales and truck probes and sampling, all of those things that need to happen on top of dumping that truck and storing the commodity, um, you can really create other bottlenecks if you're not thinking holistically about the traffic flow. You know, I was just at a feed mail the other day and um they're wanting to add some additional storage and speed and space and get a a dedicated corn receiving pit separate from the um ingredient receiving pits that they also receive corn at today. So, you know, a two million bushel facility with a new 30,000 bushel per hour pit, it all sounds great. But um when you increase that amount of trucks and you've only got one truck scale today that services both trucks and commodities for corn, um you know, you you triple your truck traffic and they all have to go on that same scale. Like we can accomplish this over here, but if we don't think about the other areas, um you're gonna have upset customers and they're and they're gonna continue to you could build all the speed and space in the world, but if you can't get them in and out of the facility properly and efficiently, they're gonna they're gonna continue to drive by you.

Balancing Cost With Long-Term Options

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

Yeah, it makes sense. Big picture, what's your footprint? And then you also have to think about traffic flow, like you said. Fantastic. Yeah. There's always a balance between upfront cost and long-term performance. How do you help customers think through that?

Chris Schaudt

Yeah, we uh kind of like I mentioned before, just talking through, you know, here's what and really it comes down to optionality. You know, there's no hard and fast, you know, this is the only answer. If you want to do this, this is exactly what you have to do. There's a lot of different avenues to go down when it comes to adding speed, adding space, adding flexibility, redundancy, um reliability in these systems. So we really spend a lot of time on, you know, we don't want any buyer to be a confused buyer, because then, you know, there's there's too many things to consider and and now we're just we're spinning our wheels. But we really like to break it down to here's here's really two options that we see. We do a lot of vetting ourselves from our experience with our designs. And uh, you know, here's option A, here's option B. Here's if we just satisfy today's needs with no consideration of the future, and here's if we consider, you know, adding that additional bin or adding that additional receiving lane or adding that additional dryer capacity or tying into the existing, you know, feed mill on site versus trucking around the the corn to dump at the feed mill. There's always an option there. We don't ever want to get to a point where it's uh hey I told you so type of situation. But uh we want to put those options in front of the clients to say this is if I was, you know, if budget was not was not limited, you know, this is what you could do. But if if we're constrained to a budget, this is this is what you absolutely have to do to satisfy today's needs.

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

Uh here's a question I'm curious about. When you walk into a facility, a new facility, never been to, can you tell fairly quickly whether it was designed with a long term in mind?

Chris Schaudt

Oh yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah. We see a lot of, you know, everybody's all about speed and space these days. If you're not getting the truck in, off the road, across the scale, across the pit, and out the door in, you know, under uh say a lot of these new facilities, 10 minutes. There's there's other guys that are doing it in under 10 minutes. So we see a lot of these older facilities that have had an old five or ten thousand bush an hour receiving leg, and now we're cramming in a big fifteen or twenty thousand bush an hour leg, and there's you've got a round tube tower that's probably already under design from day one, and now it's really maxed out with and probably exceeding the design with the new bucket elevator. And that's where we start seeing structural failures, just different things. Funny stuff starts happening when these older facilities are being asked to outperform what they were originally meant to. Really, it comes down to there's too much stuff crammed into a tight area. And sure, maybe it might be able to mechanically work, but there is no room anymore for service. There is no room for maintenance. If you've if if a motor, a bearing goes out, it's you know, it's upright against a wall or it's up against a ceiling, and there's there's no there was no forethought for for whatever that piece of equipment was to get bigger. And so now when a failure does happen, it's a more significant outage. And you know, it's the 911 phone calls are that much more urgent because it's not something simple to to replace anymore.

Derecho Rebuild Lessons Under Pressure

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

I can only imagine. You must be thinking how frustrating that kind of scenario must be for the people who work there, not thinking about the the long-term future. Let's move into something I think a lot of listeners will really enjoy. Lessons from the field. You have a lot of different experiences. You've worked on a wide range of projects over the years, and when you look back, what are a few that really stand out?

Chris Schaudt

Yeah, I'd say one of my favorite projects was at Mid Iowa Co-op at uh we call it Midway. It is in East Central Iowa, and it was directly impacted by the uh Derecho, and that rolled through on uh I think it was August 10th. My wife was 40 weeks pregnant with our fourth child, and uh yeah, that was a project in itself to maintain the family life and bring a newborn in with no power. Oh my god. But that project in particular, there were 605-foot diameter bins and a 60-foot wet bin, and the bins were all but one of the bins was completely gone. One of the bins was leaned up against the leg tower. We had to replace tower sections in the middle of the air without stacking down the tower. So some very tricky installs, cutting the tops off of concrete foundations to pour new more anchor bolts and and foundations were compromised beyond beyond being able to be reused. So that project though was a shining star for us. I mean, we had we were managing about at the peak, about 150 different contractor employees on site, including our own staff. We had the first bin fillable back in the second week of September, so about four weeks after the event occurred, and the client wasn't able to take in all of the harvest bushels, ended up filling every single grain bin. Um that was about a four million bushel facility, four and a half million bushel facility. So for a devastating event like that to occur right before harvest on August 10th, and and then for us to receive four and a half million bushels of harvest corn and soybeans was was one of my favorite projects I've worked on. Great.

Retrofitting Old Sites Without Assumptions

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

A lot of facilities today are working with legacy infrastructure. What are some of the lessons learned when expanding or retrofitting older facilities?

Chris Schaudt

Yeah, I think for us, uh never assume that old infrastructure is is good to bolt on and add on to. Really need to spend a lot of time thinking about what risks are there before we come up with this design. Because when we come up with something shiny, fancy, new that the customer gets excited about, we need to make sure that the infrastructure there is good to support that. So working with our in-house team of engineering has been super helpful to do structural analysis prior to going into a full-on design, whether that be, you know, analyzing a concrete silo roof deck. What kind of condition is that in today? Is it compromised today? Can we solve two problems with one new solution? Getting load out of areas where maybe it wasn't supposed to be, that's been added onto in the future and cleaning that up. So we recently just did that on a on a project down in Texas where a series of you know 40,000 bushel an hour chain drag conveyors were intermittently supported throughout this bin rope deck and a lot of penetrations, a lot of different pinch points and and areas that weren't ever really designed to be loaded the way they were, and and going in with a new design based on our engineered solution to to free up that that that green elevator roof that really owes the company nothing at that point. It's been standing there for 50 years, and we need to get another 50 out of it. So, how do we do that effectively with this new design and not max it out? So just starting with uh making no assumptions that that the old is is going to be able to support the new and slowing down and and taking the time to pre-plane with a little little engineering up front. Do you use drones for that ever? Uh we have some drones. Um we have we do a lot of 3D scanning in-house. Oh, is that right? And then we do like some ground penetrating radar, you know, and then a lot of non-destructive testing. Um so we'll we'll come out and we'll analyze how thick concrete is, where rebar is placed, what spacing it's placed, what the thickness of the structural steel is, you know, is it we see a tube of steel, is it quarter inch thick or five sixteenths inch thick? Um things like that, analyzing welds. Structurally, it it could all be designed to support, but if it wasn't installed or fabricated the right way from day one, you know, we need to go in and correct some of those issues that we might be be finding throughout that process.

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

From your perspective, what separates a project that runs smoothly from one that becomes more difficult?

Chris Schaudt

I think uh I mean a large portion of that is the pre-planning. I mean, a project that is not thought out well and set up for success before that shovel goes in the ground is gonna struggle. You're always gonna be playing catch-up and there's gonna be a lot of things that are now that you're forced to think about because the project's progressing and that's when decisions start getting rushed, the timeline isn't moving at the end, and things start getting missed, things start getting overlooked, and then it's left to the to the field to determine, you know, what the best possible outcome for that is. versus and it's always more expensive to do, you know, in the field after the fact versus, you know, in meetings and with engineering and and design up front. So getting a clear scope, getting a clear engineered plan developed before that project kicks off, I think, and is is huge.

Daily Communication That Keeps Projects Moving

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

And how important is communication then between the owner, the contractor, and the full team throughout the process?

Chris Schaudt

Yeah, I think right behind safety and communication is is obviously a part of safety as well, but communication is is going to, you know, either help that project flourish or or it's gonna it's gonna make it that much more difficult to execute. So we at Midstates we've seen that as a as an issue in the industry. You know, there's a lot of different construction management softwares out there, you know, say Procore for instance and and it's all shiny and and it looks great from the outside. And but there's only a few you know contractors that are really willing to put in the work to actually use that as the tool that it's meant to be. We can send emails, we can upload documents other ways, you know, and if and if you're just barely scratching the surface of some of those some of those uh communication or construction software tools you know you're not really doing it service. So we we've then implemented our own software through Acumatica which is our ERP system. So all of our estimating gets done there all of our project progress gets tracked in there all of our safety forms get filled out in there all of our daily man hours get reported in there that are being tracked down to the task level whether that's unloading a conveyor pre-building a conveyor installing a conveyor and all of that data essentially lives in our ERP system and we have an on-site project manager who is responsible for logging all that information correctly daily that then gets released to our internal team at 11 o'clock that next day for the previous day's activities and then it goes on to the client in the afternoon like 4, 430. So we are communicating daily with the clients through a very professional daily field report that shows exactly what the previous day's tasks were and what the next day's tasks are. So I don't think you can emphasize communication enough when it comes to a successful project there's you know dealing with say a large farmer maybe you know he's out there every day he's he's writing the check it's it's on his property he he can touch and feel and see everything daily a lot of times you know these clients that we're dealing with they have their corporate office somewhere and we're working you know six states away from where they're located at and they only have so much time in their schedules that allow them to visit the site. So if we can essentially you know overcommunicate daily on exactly the work that's getting done with photos associated with that and then have weekly weekly client meetings as well where we're kind of rounding the troops together and here's what we got done last week here's what here's what the two week look ahead looks like and and these are our these are our roadblocks or this is where we're at on the project.

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

So communication's huge Chris I can sense that in your voice is certainly in your diction your choice of words there that is such an important part for you and your organization like you just used as a a metaphor analogy here about farmers they know what's going on day-to-day operations there but when you are working on projects and with people stakeholders who are not there daily and and uh as you said maybe many states away it's difficult to lose that but you even use the word over communication and uh looked at your software that you use so you effectively communicated that question on communication well done Chris thanks and just to conclude here on lessons from the field you come with such uh great experience and listeners appreciate that so one final question in that area and I I would imagine just based on what you said every project there's something to learn right but was there ever a particular project or moment that had a substantial impact in how you think about facility design?

Freestanding Towers For Wind Resilience

Chris Schaudt

Going back to the the Dura show and how that that really changed my thought process on facility design specifically talking about and filling them so we've got multiple methods to fill a grain bin you can you can fill it with a spout off a bucket elevator you can you can fill it with an auger you can fill it with a drag conveyor belt conveyor all of those things but specifically talking about catwalks and and material handling systems to fill them we saw through the Derecho the need for freestanding support towers. So on the front side of things you know these grain bins externally stiffened relatively easy to bolt up a a two-legged support tower and brace it back to the bin and uh support the catwalk that way obviously less cost a little bit easier to install maybe but at the end of the day if that grain bin goes down it's pulling that tower down with it and therefore you know pulling the catwalk down as well. So on the on the flip side of that you can have a freestanding support tower. So a four-legged tower completely separate from the grain bin foundation completely separate from the grain bin not tied to the grain bin whatsoever and a catwalk that is then spanning across that grain bin to another tower um versus uh utilizing that binroof to support the catwalk in situations like that where we in the Derecho the facility I mentioned at mid-Iowa clo up at at Midway, you know it was freestanding support towers with box trusses above that did not tie into the binroof. And that was a huge part of the success of that project was being able to maintain the whole structural fill system and re-erect that grain bin below where other facilities where there were two legged towers braced to the grain bin when those grain bins went down it pulled everything down with it and they completely missed harvest. So from a facility design freestanding support towers and and catlocks that span grain bins as a huge upside from a if you do have a loss event in a windstorm that comes through and the and the grain bin goes down you have a much higher chance of being able to use that grain bin shortly thereafter. And then from the insurance side too there's there's less loss from an insurance provider and uh hopefully you're not getting into then business interruption as well. So getting back to an operating state quicker with less exposure for the insurance company. So we were asked by an insurance company to to do an analysis on a a 105 mile per hour rated grain bin versus 140 mile per hour rated grain bin and and the cost to do that is so high from the grain bin manufacturer. The the summary was you know it came back to the design of the facility and the freestanding support towers versus versus two legged support towers brakes back to the bin much better money spent there versus a higher rated grain bin that is in when it's empty is is still going to be at a a high risk of failure in those in those wind events.

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

Fantastic let's shift to uh a brief segment about practical advice I mean for the operators listening to this episode of the Cheap Soul Grain Podcast many of them may only go through a project like this once or maybe twice in their career what advice would you give them?

Chris Schaudt

All Midstates no um I would say just yeah slow down and and uh you know harvest comes once a year if you were thinking about doing a project yesterday was the right time to be starting to think about it. The more time you can give yourself the better to come up with those solutions. We'll get plenty of people that'll call in in May June and and want something done for harvest and and if it's a substantial project a lot of times those are those are uh they're hard to fit in and uh then you're kind of left with okay this is this is really the only option we have because for whatever reason you know the decision was delayed and the options to come together with a solution are are very limited at that stage. So the sooner you can start talking about what those options could be the better. Yeah I think just getting good sound advice early on.

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

Great advice thank you very much.

Chris Schaudt

All right as we uh look ahead here Chris what do you think the next generation of grain facilities will need to do differently yeah I think I mean as crazy as it sounds automation and AI and all those things are are here and and changing very quickly um and uh I was just with a with a past customer of mine that's moved on to develop uh you know an autonomous uh robotic truck probe you know why you know go to the go to the fuel station and you can you can fuel up your your your car you know 24 hours a day unmanned um why are we not doing it in the grain elevator um so I think there's gonna be a lot of uh automation a lot of there's a there's gonna be a a bigger drive for less manpower on site less people at risk of of injury um getting people out of those monotonous day-to-day you know high risk environment um and replacing with automation and uh safer facilities um so I don't know what that looks like as far as uh you know self-driving semis you know that's that still seems like a ways out there but just thinking about if automation continues to advance how are we going to adapt when it comes to handling the grain and uh making sure that decisions for that in in these designs.

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

Are there any trends in design automation or capacity that you're paying close attention to?

Chris Schaudt

Yeah the the automation side is really driving a lot of the the front end project development that we're doing so making sure that we have the right infrastructure getting built that will be able to then be automated and making sure that uh you know we're not building and installing something that's not that it is not going to communicate well with automation on the backside. So there's a huge emphasis on on automation when it comes to running the facility getting operators out of harm's way you know the control rooms the HMI screens placement all of those types of things and how we're how we're controlling those devices in the field. So whether it's you know limit switches just the mechanical side of it if if you don't set it up well for success from an infrastructure and and mechanical standpoint it's going to be harder to control on the automation side. So knowing what the knowing what that automation software is what kind of IO points there are and thinking critically about how can we how can we make this as smart as we can without going way over in the road ditch and breaking the bank. There's some pretty unique solutions out there to be able to have a very you know robust and and easy to operate automation system without without having to do all the fancy bells and whistles.

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

So I think that's interesting when you think about automation there's a lot of aspects to consider and what it impacts it can consider obviously safety, inventory management, quality management systems, and then uh the challenge that some facilities have in terms of finding curious quality hardworking employees right? Doesn't that have an impact on that and more?

Chris Schaudt

Yeah yeah that's a common theme you know it's always hard to find good help and so you know and the good help is is getting sought after by by the next guy as well. So creating a an environment where you can be in a an air conditioned room controlling uh the truck receiving area versus out in the truck receiving area pushing buttons and pulling cables and things like that you know um a lot easier to go with option one and and and retain an employee there versus versus having a more manual set of tasks to do out in a a hazardous you know dusty environment so yeah it's from the top to bottom you know setting it up for success on the on the planning side and and implementing a little automation we see a lot of our clients uh are able to retain employees a lot better when spend a little bit more money up front to create a better work environment.

Quality By Design And Final Resources

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

Sounds great. For those folks in high school they may be surprised and of course outside of high school who may not be part of the agricultural community ever uh which is largely becoming more and more the case where working in grain facilities they may be surprised how technologically savvy one can be and work to be in terms of working with grain elevators with all these tools that are out there with automation. Yeah absolutely and when you're thinking about quality by design what does that really mean going forward? And when you think about the idea of quality by design what does that mean going forward?

Chris Schaudt

Yeah I think it I think again it starts at at safety I mean if you're you can do a lot of things you can you can dump trucks fast and you can store a lot of grain and you can do it safely or unsafely and a lot of that is dictated by the design of the facility and and how it was set up from day one. I think quality starts with a safe and efficient design but not losing sight of the objective that we're still here to to receive and store and and transfer and you know process and mill but doing it with safety at the forefront and and with that you know de trying to debottleneck from the get go as well I mean like we mentioned earlier just thinking about the future and not knowing exactly what that brings but try to do our best to to not build just for today's scope and and look for future as well and and uh decisions that we're making.

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

Thank you so much. And in closing here Chris I just want to say it's been a great conversation because you brought really practical insights for really anyone thinking about building expanding or improving a green facility and so this episode brings that great perspective and there's a lot to consider and so you brought a lot of good conversation. I'm sure that they'll share it with folks in their facility in their organization. So if listeners though want to learn more about mid-states companies or connect with your team what is the best way for them to do that?

Chris Schaudt

Yeah so if you you could reach out to us on our website and we've got a great portfolio of past projects that we've done on there and and where we're currently working and kind of highlighting all of our different services that we offer always reach me by by my cell phone or email be prompt to get them back to you.

Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host)

But yeah and then we're also out at a lot of these different shows so we're going out to IAOM next week and we'll be at uh the FEW conference convey this summer as well so I'm sure we'll uh we'll cross paths somewhere and of course we have Jeeps Exchange annual event in February of every year you and your team have played a big role in making that a success and it's a great way for people to connect and uh like you said earlier in the conversation you are not transactional you and your team uh want to have a strong relationship you're problem solvers trying to work together and partner so that's a great work and uh you're a great representative of the MidStates companies thank you very much for making time your day to connect with whole green podcast listeners. Yeah thanks appreciate your time thank you we thank Chris for joining us today and for sharing his experience and insights there's a lot here that can help our listeners think differently about how they approach facility design and long-term planning. As you reflect on this with your colleagues consider this what decisions are you making today that will shape the performance of your facility for the next 10, 20 or even 30 years? And how can you ensure those decisions support not just efficiency but also safety, flexibility and long-term success. If you'd like to learn more about Midstates companies and the work they're doing across the green industry you can visit their website at midstatescompanies.com. We thank Midstates for participating in the Jeeps partner program. And as always we encourage you to explore the many resources available through Jeeps the Green Elevator Processing Society, whether it's training courses credentials or connections across the industry such as chapter events GEAPS.com that's G E A P S dot com. Thank you to our listeners around the world for tuning in. We now have listeners from 111 different countries so thank you grain professionals continue spreading the word to others and your colleagues in the industry for this show. It's a great opportunity to connect with so many. We thank you for being part of this global community of grain professionals. Until next time keep learning stay connected and continue moving the grain industry forward. My name is Jim Lenz Director of Global Education and Training with GEAPS. Make it a great day!

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Jim Lenz

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