Daryl Verchère-Glover has always been fascinated by how machines work.

“Growing up, I enjoyed watching “How It’s Made” and working on vehicles to understand the mechanics behind it all,” he said. 

This love for machines led Verchère-Glover to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering from the British Columbia Institute of Technology. After graduating, he joined the industrial baking industry, which he said felt like a natural fit.

“It brings together great people, intriguing machines with unique challenges and the chance to design machines that are not just efficient but also durable,” he said.

Verchère-Glover began his career in the industry at FME Food Machinery Engineering as a mechanical designer. He then worked at other firms in a variety of roles, including engineering manager, project manager, technical sales manager and product manager, among others. Verchère-Glover eventually returned to FME where he now serves as vice president, with the intention to succeed company founder Norman Scmidt upon his retirement. 

Reflecting on his 12 years in the industry, Verchère-Glover said his biggest accomplishments have come out in the field, working with customers to solve their most difficult challenges. 

“I enjoy the problematic doughs,” he explained. “I get excited when a customer calls and prefaces the conversation with ‘We’ve tried everything.’ ”

Building the right piece of equipment that makes life easier for a customer while simultaneously elevating their productivity and organization is incredibly rewarding, he added. With so many machines to choose from in today’s market, Verchère-Glover observed that a common challenge he sees is producers choosing one that isn’t the best fit, requiring them to sacrifice flexibility or product quality.

“I much rather prefer a perfect marriage of machine and product where no modifications to the recipe or differences to the final product can be accomplished,” he said. “All too often I see the opposite and manufacturers end up having to invest twice.”

What technology is available today that helps cookie producers reduce labor, or the need for skilled labor?

The simple answer here is purpose-built automated depositing/portioning machines. The majority of labor spent on this process is typically in the portioning and placement process of the line. Ice cream scoops and hand placement onto pans are a great example of this. Ultimately, the capital expenditure of the machinery in the process line is justified when there is an ROI involved.

Having a machine capable of taking care of the portioning and placement onto pans or paper for frozen products has a significant ROI in labor overhead alone. If a worker can portion and place a cookie every 3 to 4 seconds onto a pan, this equates to 15 to 20 cookies placed per minute. With a depositing machine, equipped with a standard four-port die, running at a very reasonable 60 cuts per minute, one laborer would be able to portion 240 deposits per minute. Not only are the deposits portioned, in most cases, you can increase the deposits per pan with more accurate placement which in turn saves oven space as well as increases throughput. You would require around 12 to 16 laborers to achieve this output. 

With a rate of $50,000 per year per employee, the cost justification is there. Modern depositors will have quick tooling changeovers, recipe driven programs, tool-free disassembly, and open access surfaces for rapid and efficient sanitation which all help to eliminate the need for multiple skilled laborers. 

For example, if a manufacturer is only producing 1,000 to 5,000 cookies/scones/brownies/every other day, it will be a big step up to move into an automated depositing line. There are machines available that can portion in those ranges, and they do a great job. However, this will only take a manufacturer so far. For larger commercial bakeries, items such as vision systems to monitor and reject products with feed-back loops to control upstream equipment, recipe driven controls and tailored designs for the tooling used to maximize the flexibility to match a manufacturer’s diverse range of products can all lead to a more automated process to reduce labor while maintaining or increasing overall quality.

What types of automation or advancements in technology allow manufacturers to boost cookie capacity or streamline production?

If a manufacturer is looking to add more capacity in the portioning process, there are a few areas to cover. Dough feeders are a great way to prevent downtime between batches. Unlike bowl lifts, which for the most part are used to eliminate the laborious task of hand feeding a hopper, dough feeders have their own hopper with a larger capacity than the depositor hopper. This creates a ‘battery’ of dough that is ready to be fed into the depositor. Coupled with a photo eye to monitor depositor hopper levels, a dough feeder will automatically feed dough to the depositor hopper and maintain hopper levels which contributes to consistency in the product being manufactured. This allows the depositor to run without having to manually monitor hopper levels, leading to downtime on the line. 

If the manufacturer has freezer or fridge capacity and is held back by oven space, break-and-bake tooling is a great method of manufacturing portioned products in a densely packed matrix. This product can then be put into the oven when capacity opens up. By densely packing deposits onto a tray and staging them, the production team won’t be required to slow the depositing equipment down to meet the bottlenecked oven capacity.

If a manufacturer is topping their baked goods with anything from cinnamon sugar, AA sugar, shredded coconut, slivered almonds or whole chocolate chips, an integrated topping applicator will reduce labor costs significantly and waste. The goal is to prevent a pan from being placed into a rack, only to be removed for a secondary or tertiary process and placed back into the same rack. Modern topping applicators are also able to pulse toppings onto individual deposits, which allows the manufacturer to recover losses that are otherwise typical in hand topping or waterfall applications. The majority of toppings are of high-quality variety, and costs can add up fast when waste is tracked.

Pan feeders and de-nesters are relevant as well. Hand feeding pans to a depositor will lead to a reduction in production. If pans are not being fed consistently or are being spaced out with large gaps between one another, production will suffer. Pan feeders for placing pans and co-bots for placing pans into racks are the next steps to a near hands-off operation. 

With all of these items coupled together, one would be able to manufacture thousands of pounds of cookies with minimal intervention from production staff. 

How can cookie manufacturers maximize the consistency and quality of their product? 

Depositing equipment has been around for decades. The older machines that were available to manufacturers were designed around the technology that was readily available at the time. I still see some of the older depositors that are actuated with cams, gears and levers. While these machines are absolute workhorses, there are aspects to the industry that require additional control over these machines and how they operate. I’ll use a pneumatic actuated knife versus a servo-actuated knife as an example. With a pneumatic actuator, you have limited control over how it reacts. You can tell it when to actuate, and you can adjust the air pressure or flow valve to make subtle changes in how it reacts. However, if your machine is equipped with a servo actuator, you have control over how that knife actuates and portions/places your products. You are able to have the knife cut through the first 90% of the cookie at a high rate of speed until the final 10% of the cut where you can slow the knife down to 10% of its typical speed. This allows placement of that cookie onto a pan in a precise location, not only on that particular cut but on all cuts on that pan as well as cuts on the next 1,000 pans. 

A popular product I see more and more often are small bite-sized cookies. By leveraging the fine tuning of a servo-actuated knife, having multiple knife speeds can make all the difference in terms of those smaller deposits while maintaining a high rate of production. Variable speed control allows the knife to cycle extremely fast even with a momentary speed reduction to ‘finish’ the cut. Small bite-sized cookies are typically packaged in a bag and are generally not sold by the typical box of dozen. There can be 30 to 50 small cookies in a bag. This requires the manufacturer to increase the number of portions to satisfy the output required. This requires an even faster rate of cut to meet the volume requirements of that product. 

Ultimately, a successful product in a manufacturer’s eyes includes customer satisfaction (mouthfeel, visual aspect and taste), portioned deposits of the correct ‘in-spec’ weights, accurate placement of those products onto a pan or paper and being able to do all of this consistently. A suitable machine will be able to accomplish these goals with minimal effort.

What are some common mistakes you see cookie manufacturers make that may result in product waste or a decrease in quality?

Depending on the products being manufactured, there are a number of things to look for. Inaccurate placement on pans will create a scenario where cookies bake into each other, which costs oven space as well as upstream and downstream labor. This can also lead to issues downstream on a packaging line and wasted products.

Having the correct feed roller and cutting device can make all the difference when dealing with different inclusions like cranberries or chocolate chips. Wire cutters are unable to cut through chocolate chips or cranberries. A knife cutter is best suited for those products. The correct cutting tool will save a mess in cleanup as well as keep the toppings inside of the cookie. The alternative is melting or burning onto the pan which will lead to increased labor in cleaning and can cause cross contamination.

It's very important to have the correct machinery in place with the flexibility to mitigate quality issues. The ideal machine touches or manipulates the dough as little as possible. This is true for not only cookies, but almost all dough handling processes. After the dough has been mixed, manufacturers should look at how different machines manipulate the dough. If long path depositors are being used in conjunction with inclusions, you may encounter smearing or fracturing as well as additional mixing. Having a machine with the shortest possible path from a hopper to the pan is ideal. The least amount of dough manipulation will yield the best results. This is where different traction rollers can yield the best results so not to fracture or smear inclusions or overwork dough. Short path depositors will also limit the amount of residual dough inside the machine after a product run. This helps when it comes to cleaning the machine, as well as accounting for lost product in the process.

What challenges may be posed when making cookies with alternative doughs and/or delicate inclusions? 

When it comes to alternative doughs or different mediums with delicate or fragile inclusions, the best results are direct, short path depositors/portioners. Long path depositors tend to smear or pull air from the dough which can cause dense finished products. With different inclusions, a variety of traction rollers of different diameter and profile can be used to prevent damage to those particulates. For delicate inclusions, FME has designed a patented roller profile that enables the base dough itself to create the traction required to extrude the dough through the machine. This unique design is the most forgiving when it comes to maintaining inclusions, eliminating smearing and mitigating any additional mixing when the dough is being extruded.  

When dealing with different viscosity doughs, the traction rollers are what shine in this regard. By switching out a set of rollers, the manufacturer would have the flexibility to extrude brownie batter, chocolate chips, scone dough and even firmer products such as biscotti, dog and cat treats, and sheeting fondant. Alongside traction rollers, dies and different cutters play a role as well. Depending on the desired shape, size or process, these are a part of the equation and should not be overlooked.

What tips do you have for those starting a new production line?

There are a few examples that come to mind. The form of automation or technology that will benefit a manufacturer’s production goals can be subjective and can vary from bakery to bakery.  

If you are a manufacturer that works in a commissary capacity or co-packs for multiple firms, you are typically handling 20 to 60 or more SKUs. In these facilities, agility is important to meet production requirements when a variety of products are being manufactured. This translates into the need for a machine that is easily adjustable, recipe driven, and efficient to clean and tear down. Most importantly, it needs to be consistently able to produce these products with minimal waste. In any given day, these manufacturers can have 8 to 10 product changeovers in an 8-hour shift of small batch formulas. Being able to seamlessly swap over from shortbread, gluten-free or chocolate chip cookies to scones or biscotti and then into brownies or sheeting creates a need to procure a machine that has the features that align with multiple changeovers. Economically priced tooling for a variety of products as well as a simple and straightforward assembly for ease of sanitation rounds out the base requirements.

For large commercial bakeries that have 5 to 15 SKUs and are able to schedule long production runs of these products, preventative maintenance schedules and real-time production monitoring plays a larger role in their day-to-day production. If you are running a single SKU for 8, 16 or 24 hours a day, an emphasis on preventative maintenance and production scheduling with minimal operator intervention becomes the real benefit. There are a variety of controls and features of a machine’s design that can be implemented to mitigate unscheduled downtime. These are the items that would be most valuable for these manufacturers. That being said, just because you’re a large commercial manufacturer does not mean you shouldn’t leverage the adaptability that is available with well-designed machines.

The most important takeaway here is that it may not be as beneficial as one would think to replicate a production line from bakery A and install that same line into bakery B. There are subtle differences in process lines that can drive the purchase of their respective equipment. It is always best to take a step back and analyze what your current and future goals are to create the best possible outcome.