Case Study
Workplaces for people with disabilities in a brewery

The employer is a brewery which has the status of an inclusive company. The brewery produces and bottles 5000 hectolitres of non-alcoholic beverages (apple, orange and multivitamin juice, lemonade, cola as well as table water) and 5000 hectolitres of beer (four different types of beer) annually with its employees. The non-alcoholic beverages and beer are sold directly on site via the brewery's own shop. Customers in the immediate vicinity can also have the drinks delivered to their homes using the brewery's home delivery service. The inclusive business or brewery is run by a qualified social worker who is also a master brewer and maltster by profession. Employees can therefore train to become brewers or maltsters at the brewery.

The following types of disability are present among the employees of the brewery:

• sensory disability
• physical disability
• mental illness
• intellectual disability

One employee who is dependent on the use of a wheelchair has a combination of disabilities or multiple disabilities (spina bifida and learning disability).

Sensory Disability:
A member of staff is deaf. She is unable to perceive acoustic information, e.g. spoken language and signals. Due to her disability, audible information must therefore be modified so that the woman can perceive it visually or tactilely.

Physical disability:
One member of staff has a deformity of the arms and fingers (dysmelia) and two members of staff are dependent on the use of a wheelchair. Of the two, one employee is dependent on the use of a wheelchair due to an "open back" or spina bifida. The employees' reach is severely restricted and they can only be used to transport loads to a limited extent.
Two other employees have spasticity that severely limits their motor skills (e.g., walking, holding, reaching, and positioning). One of them therefore uses a forearm crutch for short distances and a power wheelchair for longer distances as a mobility aid.

Mental illness:
One employee is mentally ill. They have very limited mental capacity, e.g. in relation to time/performance pressure and constantly fast-changing work processes. Therefore, they can only be used for clearly structured activities in which there are only minor deviations in the process and which are not tied to a machine cycle in terms of time.

Mental disability:
An employee has a mental disability. The employee has limited comprehension skills and has difficulty learning and memorizing.

Of the brewery employees, four have a secondary school diploma and two have learned a trade. Before working in the brewery, the employees worked in a workshop for disabled people (WfbM). One employee (with spina bifida) is currently undergoing vocational training as a brewer at the brewery. The others are to be prepared for the free labour market or for permanent employment in a brewery by working in the inclusive company and internships in other breweries.

The beer is brewed in kettles. The kettles must first be filled with malt grist and brewing water. Hops are then added when the beer is boiled later. The actual brewing process (1. mashing, 2. lautering, 3. boiling and 4. cooling) takes place automatically and is controlled and monitored by the trainee, who is dependent on the use of a wheelchair, from a monitor workstation or PC in an office. The workstation is equipped with a height-adjustable work table that can be moved underneath. Alternatively, the individual processes can also be changed directly by his colleague at the boiler control station. The fully automatic brewing process is now standard in new and large breweries. For the employees and especially for the trainee, the high degree of automation eliminates the need to lift and carry loads (malt, water, hops, etc.), as the kettles can be filled and emptied (by means of pumps) via the control system through a pipe system. After the brewing process, the young beer is cooled and then pumped into tanks for maturation. After 6 weeks, the finished beer is then pumped via the pipe system to the filling machine (bottler). Before the beer can be pumped to the bottling machine, it must be filtered. The filters required for this are cleaned by hand by the mentally ill employee after the filtering process, on the instructions of the brewmaster.
In order for the beer to be pumped through the filters to other tanks for short interim storage and later to the bottler, various connecting pipes must be screwed to the so-called panel (a switch with connections for diverting the beer) with the corresponding tank connections. The height of the panels has been shortened for this purpose so that the wheelchair user can reach and screw on the connecting pipes at the respective panel despite his limited gripping space.
The filtered beer is then pumped from the tanks via the pipe system to the filler, which is continuously fed with the beer bottles cleaned in the washing machine.
The beer bottles required for this (dirty bottles of the empties) are automatically cleaned in the washing machine. The washing machine must therefore be loaded manually with the dirty beer bottles beforehand. For this reason, the deaf employee or a mentally ill colleague takes a few bottles from the crates, which are located at an ergonomic gripping height on roller conveyors, and places them in the bottle receptacle of the machine. Malfunctions and warnings are indicated acoustically by a signal tone, visually by means of a signal lamp and on the display of the washing machine. The optical signal warns the deaf employee or draws her attention to a malfunction. The additional machine display allows the employee to see directly what kind of malfunction it is and where it is located. The display makes it possible to localize malfunctions in order to be able to eliminate them quickly so that the machine does not stand still for a long time. The washed bottles are transported to the filler via a conveyor belt. Along the way, random samples of the bottles are visually checked for cleanliness. In the bottling plant, the clean bottles are filled with beer and closed. This process is controlled by the employee with a limb malformation. Using the controls of a control panel, he can intervene directly in the filling process in order to adjust the filling quantity of the bottles to the prescribed volume, if necessary. The control panel is reached by the man, whose gripping space is restricted, with the aid of a platform. On the way from the filler to the labeller, the bottles are once again sprayed with water from the outside at the shower and the filling quantity is checked by the employee with a spastic disability. He sorts out underfilled and overfilled bottles in crates. During the activity, the man sits on the seat of his scooter turned by 90. Following the filling check, the bottles pass through the labelling machine, which has previously been fitted with labels and set up by the deaf employee. The actual labelling process is also controlled by the employee with dysmelia, as the filler and labelling machine are located directly next to each other. Finally, the labelled bottles are automatically pre-sorted and packed into crates by means of a mass manipulator by an employee with mild spasticity. The beer crates filled with bottles are stacked on Euro pallets by hand by an employee with a mental illness. The full pallets are then moved to the brewery's cold room or brewery shop using a hand pallet truck or electric walkie forklift. In the brewery shop, customers can order the beer from an employee with an intellectual disability (for delivery service) or buy it directly.
The bottling and sale of non-alcoholic beverages is identical. However, non-alcoholic beverages are not brewed, but are made from a concentrate that is mixed with water and possibly sugar syrup (e.g., cola production) in an agitator. After blending, the finished beverage is bottled.
Bottling is followed by cleaning of the machines, handling equipment and conveyor systems. Each employee takes on cleaning tasks that he or she is able to perform due to disability, e.g. wheelchair users take on cleaning tasks within their limited gripping space.

All machines, additional equipment and work aids (panel, acoustic signal indicators, PC control station and machine display, platforms and floor conveyors) are standard devices that are part of the general range of the manufacturers. The additional devices in question do not generally serve specifically to compensate for functional failures or limitations of people with disabilities. For example, optical signals in companies with a significant level of noise serve to warn employees of dangers on a different sensory level (not acoustically). In the brewery, the visual signals on the machines are specifically used to alert the deaf employee to disturbances and warn her of hazards.

The work in the brewery is organised in such a way that the mental, psychological and physical functional deficits and limitations are compensated by the employees themselves, using technical aids. The physical work, such as lifting, carrying and transporting loads, is carried out by the employees with mental illnesses, as they have no physical functional limitations. Mental work, on the other hand, such as control work, set-up work
and work requiring a high degree of flexibility (rectifying faults on machines, etc.), is carried out by the physically disabled employees. In principle, they take on the function of foremen in the brewery, guiding and controlling the mentally ill in the performance of their work. The activities carried out by the mentally ill are simply structured and constantly repeated. Overstrain due to sudden problems is thus avoided.

The brewery's inclusive operation and equipment has been and continues to be financially supported by Stiftung Wohlfahrtspflege, Aktion Mensch and the Integration Office, which is assuming the personnel costs for the disabled employees during the start-up phase (2 years). In addition, the brewery received material (machine) support from Henkel AG.