This post is part of an ongoing series of manufacturer profiles. The blogs will cover some of the many big names in manufacturing in the state of Nebraska. Check back later for more posts in the series. To see previous posts in the series, see here: BD, Kawasaki, Hornady, Kellogg’s, and Case New Holland.

We’ve already covered Kellogg’s, but as it turns out, corn flakes aren’t the only type of food manufactured here in Nebraska–manufacturers like Nestlé Purina are making dog food, too.

Pet food producer Nestlé Purina has a factory in Crete, Nebraska (just southwest of Lincoln) where many of their pet food products are made. They’re a large employer in the city, and like many of the manufacturers we’ve already featured, are high-tech, advanced manufacturers.

Nestlé Purina is the pet food division of Nestlé, owning well-known pet food brands like Purina, Fancy Feast, Friskies, and ONE. They’re based in St. Louis, but have plants and offices all over the world.

Jobs with the company range from , to , to positions at the company’s . There are positions across all platforms, but within manufacturing, Nestlé Purina has jobs within three divisions:

• Maintenance
  within the company “maintain all equipment at the factory, tend to the lines during production, and perform preventative maintenance to decrease the amount of unplanned downtime. [They] continually look for ideas to help improve factory performance and efficiencies and build integrity by making our operators’ jobs safer.
  
• Production
  with Nestlé Purina primarily do “unloading, processing, and packing,” and some of the roles for production workers within the company include “unloading, transferring, storing, documenting and inventorying ingredients, testing new products and innovations when introduced at the plant, ensuring the product is made accurately, and performing regular quality checks.”
• Warehouse
  work “as a certified fork truck operator removing unit loads from palletizers, chute hauling unit loads to designated bins, and loading unit loads into trucks for customer or factory-to-factory deliveries.”

Nestlé Purina and the jobs they offer serve as reminders of a few things: one, that the types of things manufactured in Nebraska are incredibly varied (we’ve now covered things from motorcycles to dog food), and two, that jobs within the industry itself are incredibly varied. No matter what your interests are, there’s a good chance that you’ll find something you like to do in manufacturing.

Even though you might not expect pet food manufacturing to be the most advanced industry around, it’s actually very high-tech. The same principles of manufacturing that are true for making farm equipment are true for pet food too, so don’t count out a company just because you think they’re not advanced.

If you’re interested in learning more about a career with Nestlé Purina, you should definitely check out the video below–and don’t forget Nestlé Purina’s . The first-hand accounts from the employees are great, as is the technology the video shows:

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photo credit: via