Proof Gallons per Day per Employee

[Lmiller]

What is everyone getting for proof gallons per day per employee? Curious to see what the average is among craft distillers. I'm really only concerned with production employees, not marketing or sales or anything. We get 40-45 PG/day/employee. 

[Lmiller]

Bump. No one feels like sharing?

[Huffy2k]

We measure PG per bushel of grain but not by employee.  Given the different size operations across the universe of craft distillers,  your metric would only be useful when compared to distilleries that run the same size and type still/fermenters/etc as you do. 

[captnKB]

Lmiller. Can you elaborate further on your operation? 

for example: a distillery running a large continuous column still will produce far more PG per employee hour versus a a distillery with a single 100 gal pot still. 

 

[Silk City Distillers]

Agree with the Capt'n and Huffy, this would seem to be more a measure of the level of operational automation vs employee efficiency if comparing similarly sized operations, especially if we're talking end-to-end processing.  If used as a broader metric, across varying scale, I think it would generally skew higher in larger batch size operations, since many processes are time limited, and not limited by personnel.  Mashing and distilling, for example, would not benefit from additional manpower, however, a largely manual bottling line, would.

Looking at where  the major production bottlenecks might be, I would imagine an operation that had some level of automated grain processing (silo to mash tun), automated CIP, fixed lines/pumps between tanks/stills, automated labeling/bottling lines, would have a major advantage over those who didn't.

I think this number would be all over the place without some mechanism to normalize the metric so that is a bit more comparable.

[RobertS]

We're in your ballpark, Lmiller. Rate limiting step at this point is definitely the stills, not manpower.