Bottling Machines

With an early start to our day, we all thought we would be having another typical day of city travel and tour of a company. Today we were headed to Krones to see where they make the machines that bottle beverages, as well as other commodities such as jams and, most recently, Clorox wipes. Unfortunately, our train into Munich was just the slightest bit late, creating a ripple effect, and causing us to miss the bus that would take us to the Krones facility. After about 30 minutes of waiting, we finally got on the right bus and we were on our way.

Upon arriving at Krones, we were all given visitor passes along with neon yellow vests that were more like v-shaped beauty pageant sashes. We then went up to a conference room where we were pleasantly surprised with fancy bottled water, Coca-Cola, and Krones’ very own gummies in the shape of their logo. After taking the time to settle in, we were presented a PowerPoint outlining all the different aspect of the company, from working with their customers on creating the best machines specified to their needs, to their financial status and the different growing markets. For example, bottled water is a growing market especially here in Germany. What I found interesting was how they design their machines to be as intuitive as possible, that way virtually anyone can operate them with minimal training making it easier for companies in less developed areas to hire workers.

The time then came for us to tour the facility and see exactly where and how they were making these machines. Unfortunately, we were walking through during lunch hour so most workers were on break, and thus we did not see much of the different processes going on. This did, however, make it easier for us to hear our tour guide, but it was still fairly loud in most areas. Overall, I found it to be fun and informative tour and definitely peaked my interest in the bottling process, specifically the bottling of still versus sparkling water.