Case Study: Valley Queen Cheese Factory achieves predictive maintenance and improved uptime with eMaint

South Dakota cheese company shifts to predictive maintenance with Fluke 3561 FC sensors and eMaint

Valley Queen Cheese, a 315‑employee dairy processor in Milbank, South Dakota that produces about 200 million pounds of cheese a year, completed a $50 million expansion that increased capacity by 25% and added much more critical equipment. The plant needed reliable, continuous condition monitoring—especially of a large blower and its bearings that move product to packaging—because unexpected equipment failures can halt production and jeopardize active cheese batches.

To address this, Valley Queen installed Fluke 3561 FC wireless vibration and surface‑temperature sensors integrated with eMaint CMMS. The pre‑provisioned sensors were quick to mount and began feeding vibration trends and alarms into eMaint, triggering work orders and enabling early detection of bearing wear, misalignment, or imbalance. The program has shifted the plant from purely preventive maintenance toward predictive maintenance, allowing scheduled service before failures and plans to expand monitoring to other critical assets like ammonia compressors.

Valley Queen Cheese Factory

Eric Pulling,

Manufacturing Utility Process Eengineer