Hi from York

Hi All,

I thought I would say hello as I'm a new member. I'm a Sparky, I did my apprenticeship with BREL in York. I'm now working as a maintenance electrician at Nestlé in York. My main task at work is monitoring the chocolate manufacturing machines via Rockwell PLC controls on two PC screens. I also fix the machines in the event of a breakdown.

I have a bit of knowledge about RSLogix software, if anyone needs help I could possibility answer your questions. I'm sure I will need the help of the forum members at some point.

Cheers

Leon.

Welcome to the forum LeonH. So what chocolate product do you oversee then on these machines?

Doc H.

Any Logix 500,5000 Studio 5000 questions fire away. It's my bread and butter. 

Although if you need PLC help there are more suitable forums as most on here don't deal with them. 

more importantly, how much chocolate do you get to keep?!

Doc Hudson said:

Welcome to the forum LeonH. So what chocolate product do you oversee then on these machines?

Doc H.

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Hi Doc H,

I oversee all of the different types of chocolate that Nestlé makes for all of their products, such as... Kitkat, Yorkie, Aero, Chocolate Buttons, including chocolate for Nestlé's other factories in the UK, where things like Toffee Crisp, Blue Riband etc are made. I maintain all of the machinery that puts together all of the raw ingredients that eventually become chocolate. My job can range from big 2 ton motors that drive the 10 ton coaches, to electronic cards, dodgy contactors, or just small tweaks on the PLC's that each machine has.

Leon.

Rob. said:

Any Logix 500,5000 Studio 5000 questions fire away. It's my bread and butter. 

Although if you need PLC help there are more suitable forums as most on here don't deal with them. 

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Cheers Rob I'll bear that in mind. We have quite a good support team at Nestlé, but if anything crops up, I may give you a shout.

Leon.

Andy™ said:

more importantly, how much chocolate do you get to keep?!

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Hi Andy,

We can't bring chocolate home unless it's authorised of course , but lets say you could easily put on a few pounds at work. There is usually an abundance of Kitkats and Aero's available for taste testing lol.

Leon.

Andy™ said:

more importantly, how much chocolate do you get to keep?!

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I had a friend that worked for Mars.  You could eat as much as you wanted at the factory, but taking any out of the gate was a sackable offence.

ProDave said:

I had a friend that worked for Mars.  You could eat as much as you wanted at the factory, but taking any out of the gate was a sackable offence.

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Hi Dave,

Mmmm imagine that... as many Mars Bars and Twix's you could eat, I'd be like the back end of a bus.

My son works for a confectionery manufacturer and I was a production manager for McCain’s. He can’t stand the sight of sweets and it took me four years before I would eat a singe chip. Part of my job was the hourly tasting panel in the QA lab and I hated it!

Not everything is as good as it seems.
 

Tony S said:

My son works for a confectionery manufacturer and I was a production manager for McCain’s. He can’t stand the sight of sweets and it took me four years before I would eat a singe chip. Part of my job was the hourly tasting panel in the QA lab and I hated it!

Not everything is as good as it seems.
 

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Hi Tony,

I know exactly what you mean, I'm also a taste tester. We check every batch of chocolate for visual, smell and taste. Each batch is also tested for particle size and viscosity. The thing is, I have a sweet tooth and I never tire of eating chocolate.

I used to love chocolate, now I hate it! It's all thanks to those foreign companies, including Nestle, who've ruined it.

Non of it tastes like it used to do, last year we had a tin of Roses and a tin of Quality street, every chocolate in the Roses had a faint orange taste, a bit like a Terry's chocolate orange.

It amazes me why if British chocolate is so good, why when a foreign company buys the British firm do they have to mess with everything. You either like our chocolate or you don't, in which case buy some foreign carp and leave the British stuff alone.

LeonH said:

Hi Dave,

Mmmm imagine that... as many Mars Bars and Twix's you could eat, I'd be like the back end of a bus.

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He said after the first week the novelty wore off and he hardly ate any.

phil d said:

I used to love chocolate, now I hate it! It's all thanks to those foreign companies, including Nestle, who've ruined it.

Non of it tastes like it used to do, last year we had a tin of Roses and a tin of Quality street, every chocolate in the Roses had a faint orange taste, a bit like a Terry's chocolate orange.

It amazes me why if British chocolate is so good, why when a foreign company buys the British firm do they have to mess with everything. You either like our chocolate or you don't, in which case buy some foreign carp and leave the British stuff alone.

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Hi Phil,

I must admit that British chocolate including Nestlé chocolate is not the same tasting as it used to be when I was a kid in the late 60's and through the 70's. Ingredients that go to make chocolate has become very expensive and so manufacturers like Nestlé have to find ways of producing the chocolate by using sustainable ingredients and at the same time try to keep the prices down. This is done by finding alternative green environmentally friendly ingredients and so over the years the chocolate taste changes slightly. Most recently though, the health conscious government, are making legislations that confectionery manufacturers have to adhere to. The two main ones that Nestlé etc are working on is reducing sugar and reducing portion size. You will notice that chocolate bars are shrinking and the large family sized bars have portion sizes printed on the wrappers and are re-sealable. You will also notice that Nestlé are reducing sugar and replacing it with more milk and cocoa, some of the Kitkats now have this printed on the wrappers. So sometimes the chocolate taste in the UK is out of the manufacturers hands.

I can't comment on the Roses chocolates being tainted with orange flavour as they are a Cadbury's product. Nestlé make the quality street chocolates here in the UK and in my experience (We usually get given 2 tins at Christmas) they are usually very nice tasting and of a good quality. At Nestlé if everything isn't correct at the time of manufacture, the whole line is stopped until the problem is rectified. There are two main things that Nestlé drill into us, The first is safety as of course safety is paramount and the second is quality at whatever it may cost.

I hope that might explain a few things.

LeonH said:

the health conscious government, are making legislations that confectionery manufacturers have to adhere to. The two main ones that Nestlé etc are working on is reducing sugar and reducing portion size.

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typical of the government, oh look, the kids are getting fat, there also eating chocolate, we must reduce that to stop them getting fat. er... if chocolate made you fat then i should be obese, although those who have met me will confirm im anything but that. would be much easier to just leave it alone and tell the parents to stop being such **** parents and make their kids do some exercise if they want chocolate...

Andy™ said:

typical of the government, oh look, the kids are getting fat, there also eating chocolate, we must reduce that to stop them getting fat. er... if chocolate made you fat then i should be obese, although those who have met me will confirm im anything but that. would be much easier to just leave it alone and tell the parents to stop being such **** parents and make their kids do some exercise if they want chocolate...

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I Agree with you fully Andy, lets face it if someone buys a smaller bar, eats it and then thinks that it's not enough, they will buy another and eat that as well, so in effect they eat more. No amount of fiddling with sizes and contents will stop someone from becoming obese. There are too many do-gooders spoiling things in this country. Nestlé's sales have fallen quite a lot recently and I blame Jamie Oliver and his school meals campaign, trying to make meals healthier. This prompted parents to think about the things that they were putting in their child's lunch box, so out goes the two finger KitKat, reducing sales to the point where here in York, Nestlé are making 142 workers redundant and reducing working hours therefore reducing our wages drastically. Having to reduce bar and portion sizes will not help sales either in my opinion.

LeonH said:

wrappers and are re-sealable.

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Well, from a personal point of view, that was something that did not need inventing !

resealable chocolate bar?        Walkers crisps went the other way and brought out the crisp bag that turns into a 'bowl' so you can get both hands in

just drooling 

Andy™ said:

typical of the government, oh look, the kids are getting fat, there also eating chocolate, we must reduce that to stop them getting fat. er... if chocolate made you fat then i should be obese, although those who have met me will confirm im anything but that. would be much easier to just leave it alone and tell the parents to stop being such **** parents and make their kids do some exercise if they want chocolate...

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Agree mate, too much government interference, it's a bit like smoking, which I do, they no longer make packs of 10, you have to buy 20, I smoke more if I have a bigger pack, who wins? The government of course, more money coming in.

ProDave said:

I had a friend that worked for Mars.  You could eat as much as you wanted at the factory, but taking any out of the gate was a sackable offence.

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Same at Cadburys , eat all you like onsite , but don't even think about dropping one in your pocket.

I didn't work for them but was there installing electrics to the chocolate egg lines  , they couldn't make them fast enough at the time.

Couple of things I remember from being there ,  the long walk from the car park to the work area .  Its like walking to the other side of a  town . 

No smoking within 1000 miles of the place , I smoked back then so not good.

The sickly sweet smell in the dept that made the fillings , stays up your nose and spoils your sarnies.

A distribution board after being fixed to the wall had a bead of mastic all around to prevent insects living behind it.  All spare KO,s  MUST have stop ends in them . 

And finally a hint that could save your life on a desert island .........  if you run out of tallow or thread cutting paste when threading steel conduit .........a Cadbury's Wallnut Whirl will make a good substitute.     NOt many people  know that .

I worked at Pataks for a spell, the smell on a Monday morning was horrible, it made you want to throw up, they had a staff shop and for about a fiver you could almost fill the car boot. I used to get loads every week and the wife used to take some of it to work for her mates, the smell of curry got everywhere,when I left the wife washed my boiler suit and put it in one of my drawers, six months later I got it out and it still reeked of curry.The daftest one was when I worked at Kraft Foods, their staff shop was only open on wednesday's, trouble was they let the public in too, by the time we got in there at lunchtime there was beggar all left.

The people from the estate over the road used to storm the place, mind you they sold catering packs of cheese slices for about a quid! not bad for about 200 slices.

I had a big argument with the safety officer in there, they had coloured lines all around the place, leading to fire assembly points, you followed your line and that took you to your point.

The place was all refrigerated and they used ammonia, it's nasty stuff, anyway I was working about 20 yards from an external door, yet this clown said if the alarm went I had to follow the line associated with my muster point! No way, I'm not running into a building with an ammonia leak and I told him so in no uncertain terms. Yes I will go to my muster point, but I'll run around the OUTSIDE of the building to get there!