By Bruce Wesner & Corey Simpson, LifeCycle Engineering
Key takeaways:
Reactive, compliance-only training is a liability in F&B. Company-owned training roadmaps tied to specific operational outcomes reduce downtime, waste, and recurring failures.
Training can fund itself. Savings from applied skills get documented and reinvested in the next round of workforce development, making the ROI case to leadership.
Development is a retention strategy. Employees with a clear growth path stay longer and perform better, and the cost of an untrained workforce that stays far exceeds the risk of a trained one that leaves.
Food and beverage manufacturing is one of the world’s most unforgiving environments when it comes to time. Production is high-volume and continuous, and downtime can quickly escalate from a scheduling headache into a massive financial loss involving spoiled ingredients, missed delivery windows, and potential compliance violations. Because of this, execution of maintenance and sanitation are often relegated to the narrowest possible windows.
While plant managers and executives invest heavily in the reliability of their machinery, there is a lingering tendency to treat the human infrastructure (the workforce operating and maintaining these assets) as a variable cost to be managed rather than a foundational asset to be developed. In the past, many organizations have relied on a self-sought model where training is either bare bones to meet regulatory compliance standards, left to the individual’s initiative, or reactive. However, as the industry faces a generational shift in labor and a rapid introduction of complex technology, this hands-off approach is becoming an expensive liability.
A shift toward ownership
The traditional training model in many F&B plants is pegged to meeting and documenting compliance regulations and otherwise incident-driven. A safety breach occurs, or a critical gearbox fails, and suddenly the budget opens for a one-off certification or a two-day seminar. This firefighting approach to education creates a fragmented workforce where skills are inconsistently applied.
In our work, it’s clear that employees and organizations are trying to move from reactive to proactive. The Life Cycle Institute (LifeCycle Engineering’s training division) has seen a 16% increase in F&B students in the last two years (2024-2026) compared to the two years prior. Out of 74 industry verticals tracked, F&B now represents the largest percentage of students seeking formal certifications, followed by pharmaceutical manufacturing.
This shift is not happening in a vacuum. Organizations are moving toward a top-down roadmap because they realize that when training is planned by the company rather than the individual, it can be linked to specific operational outcomes. A worker might pursue a certification because it looks good on a resume, but an executive directs a team toward Root Cause Analysis training or Maintenance Planning because the plant is losing 4% of its yield to preventable mechanical issues.
Bridging the knowledge gap
The industry is currently caught between two demographic realities. On one side, veteran workers with thirty years of experience are retiring. They possess tribal knowledge that can’t be printed in a handbook, the ability to hear a slight pitch change in a motor and know exactly which bearing is about to fail. On the other side, younger digital natives are entering the workforce. They are comfortable with the sensors and software of Industry 4.0, but they often lack the mechanical intuition of their predecessors.
When a company owns the training roadmap, it can standardize the old guard’s communal wisdom into a repeatable curriculum. Instead of a new hire spending three years shadowing a veteran to learn the quirks of a specific production line, a structured program ensures that best practices are documented and taught from day one. This standardization protects the company against the “generational cliff” and ensures that institutional memory stays within the building even when the people change.
Investing in a feedback loop
One of the biggest hurdles to putting a comprehensive training program in place is the perceived cost. In a thin-margin business, finding the budget for external training can be difficult.
But training shouldn’t be viewed as a sunk cost. In reality, it’s an investment that generates its own capital through a feedback loop of skilled labor. When employees apply new skills in reliability engineering or maintenance management through a revamped maintenance schedule or a completed Root Cause Analysis on a recurring failure, they generate measurable savings through reduced waste, lower spare parts spending, and increased uptime.
A team that completes a Reliability Engineering program might identify a flaw in a lubrication process that was causing monthly motor failures. By fixing the process, they save the company thousands of dollars in annual repair costs and lost production time. Then, a portion of that performance/maintenance is absorbed back into the general fund and specifically earmarked to fund the next round of training for more staff.
This creates a self-sustaining cycle of reinvestment:
Initial investment: Leadership funds training for a core group of employees.
Application: The group produces a work product that solves a specific operational problem.
Validation: The financial impact of that solution is tracked and verified.
Reinvestment: The verified savings are used to bankroll the training for the next tier of the workforce.
By documenting the ROI of these programs, plant leaders can present a data-backed business case to leadership, transforming training from an extra into a self-funding mechanism for operational excellence.
Training as a retention tool
The self-sought training model also ignores the psychological impact of professional development. FIE’s Upskilling Report found that nearly 70% of employees are eager to learn new skills. In a labor market where F&B manufacturers are constantly competing for talent, providing a clear path for advancement is a powerful retention tool. When an organization provides the roadmap, it shows the employee that they have a future within the company. It moves the conversation from “How much do you pay per hour?” to “How will you help me grow as a professional?”
The People at Work 2025 report by ADP found that workers are twice as likely to say they have no intent to leave their organization compared to workers who have the skills but lack on-the-job training opportunities. Still, many managers are worried that if they train their employees too well, those employees will leave for better-paying jobs at a competitor. However, the alternative is far more dangerous: having an untrained, stagnant workforce that stays.
The operational cost of errors, accidents, and inefficient work far outweighs the risk of turnover. In high-stakes environments like food safety, an untrained employee is both a productivity drain and a liability. Ownership of the training roadmap lets leadership bake learning into the daily flow of work.
Building a workforce for 2026
For a culture of continuous development to take hold, it needs more than just a budget; it needs a sponsor. The most successful programs are those where a member of the leadership team kicks off the training and clearly explains the “why” to the participants. When employees understand how their new skills tie into the company’s goals, whether that is increasing sustainability, reducing waste, or preparing for a digital transformation, the engagement levels rise.
Training is the infrastructure that makes high-volume production possible. By moving away from reactive, self-sought certifications and toward a strategic, self-funding roadmap, F&B leaders can build a workforce that is not just capable of keeping the machines running, but of driving the business forward.
Corey Simpson is the Manager of the Life Cycle Institute, the learning, leadership, and change management practice at Life Cycle Engineering. She oversees day-to-day operations including, but not limited to, customer service delivery, supervision of logistics and customer service staff, projects related to new offerings, business unit marketing strategy, business process creation, course maintenance, documentation and improvement, and maintenance of external and internal Institute partnership.
Bruce Wesner is the Managing Principal and General Manufacturing Vertical Leader at Life Cycle Engineering. He has an extensive track record of industrial leadership, operational excellence, and transformational performance improvement across multiple sectors. Over the course of his career, he has held numerous executive and operational leadership roles, including Vice President of Manufacturing, Vice President of EHS & Engineering Services, General Manager, and Plant Manager. His work has included leading major operational reliability transformations, overseeing substantial capital investments, and delivering significant increases in manufacturing capacity.
