brian georgeson is a 2007 graduate of hopkins high school. he has a new appreciation for how much effort it takes to get a simple bag of potato chips from the fryer in the factory to the shelves of a store. brian georgeson is a minnetonka native. he is majoring in packaging at university of wisconsinstout. he was one of four students that won second place in a recently held national contest of packaging machinery manufacturers institute. this contest challenged them to design a packaging line for an imaginary potato chip company. they were given one month to plan their concept before demonstrating it at the pack expo conference at chicago. university of florida&39s team won the first place. uwstout team members got 2,000 in scholarships for winning second place in a contest. the panel of judges was made up of industry experts that included one from old dutch, which is a snack company. a team member, sydney gale said that it was definitely rewarding. all the hard work and research they put into the project paid off. gale also mentioned that after presenting their project to judges, they felt confident. the first task of a team was to research and choose machines, which will weight, bagged and packed the chips in cases. gale further said that hundreds of machine options were available, and the aspects like machine cost, floor space and production timing required to be taken into consideration. gale said that while choosing the machines, production constraints were kept in mind. the machine had to function in four flavours of chips and three sizes of chip bags. a team had to develop a production schedule and act according to it. a team came up with two packaging lines. one of it was a 2ounce bag, and the second was a different line that switched between 6.5 and 14ounce bags of potato chips. this could be done while still utilizing the machinery at proficient speeds. b&r industrial automation sponsored this contest. marc ostertag is ceo at b&r. ostertag mentioned that judges had job cut out for them and students presented excellent proposals. choosing between great proposals took most of the day. source of informationhttphopkins.patch.comarticleshopkinsgraddesignspotatochippackagingforcontest
