When it comes to capital spending, bakeries often face multiple options in automating an operation. The challenge then becomes which alternatives are the best for a quick return on investment by driving efficiency and boosting capacity.

“You look for a couple of different things,” said Jeremiah Tilghman, chief operations officer of Better Butter, Salt Lake City, who has worked at several bakery operations. “You can look for headcount reduction, and most of the time, that's in packaging.”

Robotics, he said, have become much more intuitive and a lot less complicated solution for reducing high-labor areas. He also looks at a department — typically packaging — where the company can invest in affordable redundancy.

Simply put, he doesn’t want inefficiency and waste after products are already made and just need wrapping, bagging and shipping.

“The end of the line is the most expensive place to waste your product, and unfortunately, this is where most of the waste occurs,” Tilghman explained. “For us, it’s labelers in packaging or making sure that the back of the line has enough capacity to handle the output from the line. So I use a ‘rule of 20%.’ I want at least 20% buffer in my packaging. I never ever want it to be my bottleneck.”

Jim Kline, president, The EnSol Group, advised bakers to “find the mousetrap that works best for you and stay with it.” Often, bakers find more advanced equipment that doesn’t match the skill level of the workforce.

Such investments can hurt a bakery’s operating performance when the employees’ skills are not considered before investments are made. 

“This is not to suggest modernization or expansion should be limited, but suggests a significant effort has to be given to preparing the workforce and the equipment,” he explained. “It is a form of marriage involving an individual’s skills and appropriate control technology, such as multi-lingual screens, larger font type, addressing color acuity issues and designed for operators who may not have the prowess of a ‘gaming’ expert.”

This article is an excerpt from the December 2023 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Operational Efficiency, click here.