Transformation in Action Profile: Jonathan Riechert
March 9, 2017
Riechert led Hillshire Brand's first foray into improved visibility.
There’s an old adage that too much knowledge about how sausage is made will diminish one’s enjoyment of the finished product. But at Tyson Foods’ Hillshire Brands subsidiary—
maker of the popular Jimmy Dean breakfast sausages—operations personnel are enjoying the benefits of improved visibility into their manufacturing processes.
Riechert’s passion for innovation and continuous improvement has its roots in his early work as a plant electrical engineer, out on the plant floor, working with maintenance, repeatedly fixing the same things that broke every day.
“I thought, there has to be a more permanent fix—this is insane,” Riechert says. Today he continues to work on ways to make Tyson’s operations personnel more productive and effective, experimenting with wearable technology such as Google Glass for hands-free delivery of operating manuals. He looks forward to the day when more and more people will have access to the data and information they need to make better decisions. “I hope that in the years to come we have a better handle on plant data, and are building better interfaces for the people who need them.”
Jonathan is among The Smart Industry 50, a collection of individuals putting the concepts of the Industrial Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, cloud computing and big data analytics to work with demonstrable results. Learn more about The Smart Industry 50 here.
