S3EP17: Brewing Beer at Scale

Once a boutique operation, New Belgium Brewing is now producing millions of barrels of beer. In this episode, Bill sits down with Adam Little, who has been with the company for nearly nine years and currently serves as Senior Manager, Enterprise Security and Compliance. They dive into how New Belgium has used edge technologies to scale their production to meet increasing demand and to improve their distribution processes.

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Key Quotes: 

“As we've grown over the years, we said look, the only way we can do this is looking at the data and really using our power of IT to drive that business forward. How can we save time in the brewing process? How can we get a couple more cans off the line? How can we get a couple more cases out the door? Are we brewing the right things at the right time so that we're prepared for demand?”

“One thing's for sure, if you never collect the data you can't make the right decision with it.”

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Show Timestamps: 

(02:05) How technology supports beer production

(06:15) Scaling production through automation

(07:03) What data do they collect, and how do they collect it?

(13:03) Using data to support distribution

(19:03) Increasing canning speed and capacity

(23:47) The process of automating

(26:37) Processing data and determining what to keep

(30:37) Identifying the business problem

(37:23) What is next for New Belgium?

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Sponsor:

Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting dell.com/edge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.

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Credits:

Over the Edge is hosted by Bill Pfeifer, and was created by Matt Trifiro and Ian Faison. Executive producers are Matt Trifiro, Ian Faison, Jon Libbey and Kyle Rusca. The show producer is Erin Stenhouse. The audio engineer is Brian Thomas. Additional production support from Elisabeth Plutko and Eric Platenyk.

Links: 

Follow Bill on LinkedIn

Connect with Adam Little on LinkedIn

Learn more about what New Belgium Brewing is doing at the edge: Video, Case Study