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48 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine David Meier is using Toyota Production System principles to make whiskey flow through a 19th century distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. Meier started work at Toyota in the 1980s and later became a traveling consultant. During his travels, he began thinking about establishing his own manufacturing-cen- tered business closer to home. After researching his options, he came upon the original Old Crow Distillery that had been shut down since 1985. The 16-acre property had not been maintained since it closed, and Meier purchased the place in 2014. For Meier, the Toyota Production System (TPS) and distilling bourbon whiskey have problem-solving and ingenuity in common. When he bought the distillery, Meier had a huge restoration project, a shoestring budget, three employees and the occasional intern. Meier and his team first restored one of the main buildings for the distillery. The team designed and built nearly all equipment used for the mash, fermentation and distillation process, and Glenns Creek Distilling was running by May 2015. In that time, the team built a small pot still they named "Tiny Tim" to get the funda- Helping the whiskey flow, Toyota style Solutions in practice case study This main building of Glenns Creek Distilling is shown before its renovation. The distillery started operating in 2015 after a slew of renovations.