An industry veteran of 25 years, Katie Bellott has held just about every role imaginable across food and beverage, including inside sales, analyst, planner, area supervisor, plant manager and purchasing manager. However, she says her journey to the manufacturing side of the industry began almost by accident. 

“My first job at Cargill was in inside sales. From there, I moved into product and production planning roles,” she said. “The closer my roles got me to the plants and manufacturing operations, the more interested I became in it. I wanted to be on the plant floor where it all happened.”

This included roles as production scheduler and operations supervisor for Dawn Foods, as well as planning and supply chain manager for Ice-O-Matic. Today, Bellott is a senior solutions consultant for QAD Redzone, where she uses her years of manufacturing experience to help plants solve their biggest operational challenges. 

“Having been in manufacturing as long as I have and in as many roles as I have, I know intimately the pains and frustrations plant teams feel every day,” she said. “I walk production lines and talk to plants about those problems. I estimate I’ve toured about 300 facilities. Being able to then provide a solution for those problems through Redzone is very satisfying. It’s almost like going back in time to all those early manufacturing roles and getting the system that I was always trying to build myself.”

Bellott said there’s been a theme in her work over the years: getting better access to data and making it meaningful for plants. With the right data at their disposal and an understanding of how to use it, baking and snack manufacturers can drive productivity and profitability in their plants. 

“Margins are traditionally very slim in baking,” Bellott noted. “Every single resource needs to be maximized to be profitable. And resources refer to all the elements in manufacturing. How do we increase output without large capital investment? By making more of the minutes in a day productive minutes.” 

In this Tech Expert Q&A, Bellott discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) can drive this productivity and profitability for baking and snack operations.

How is AI technology being implemented in baking and snack facilities today? 

I definitely see it as a companion to operations, maintenance and quality teams. It’s collecting information from many disparate sources to track, trend and then advise on process improvements. 

What benefits can AI bring to these operations? What challenges is it helping solve?

Even in this modern world, baking is an art and bakers are artisans. The best bakers have this instinctual ability to tweak their processes amid changing variables to get the perfect product every time. To most of us, this huge set of variables like protein and ambient temperature and oven temperature and humidity seems like an incomprehensible mess. However, AI is able to look at large data sets, identify patterns and apply meaning to the data. And AI evaluates data impartially, meaning that it’s not swayed by personality or tenure. This creates an opportunity to quantify in a repeatable format what highly skilled bakers have learned over 10 or 20 years of practice.

How does Redzone’s Connected Workforce solution improve a bakery’s workforce?

Redzone’s Connected Workforce is an upskilled workforce. Imagine the impact on a team of knowing if their efforts are enough to change their results from “red” to “green” for the hour or the day. That’s real-time reinforcement of a job well done. They’ve now got SOPs (standard operating procedures) at their fingertips. And with the ability to collaboratively problem-solve on everyday frustrations that keep them from being “green,” teams are simply able to convert more nonproductive minutes to output minutes.

How can this technology enhance collaboration between these teams? 

AI is a huge opportunity for another level of collaboration. Champion AI, Redzone’s embedded AI, is now combing through the hundreds, thousands and millions of data points each manufacturing line generates. Champion AI is identifying in seconds the patterns between diverse data sources. It would take hours of custom reporting to begin to analyze even a few dimensions of these potential correlations, and human eyes could still miss those patterns. 

Connecting line speeds to first pass quality. Connecting SKU-specific information to best centerline settings. Champion AI is seeing these patterns and making recommendations on settings, on which SOPs are relevant to which formats or SKUs, on what top losses have historically been connected to a SKU. Imagine now when a team comes together for a five-minute meeting on how best to maximize the day, they’re already starting with a higher understanding of how to achieve an excellent run.

How can this technology enhance worker satisfaction and reduce turnover?

My main takeaway from years in operations management is that people don’t mind working hard, but they absolutely hate working frustrated. And everyone likes to win. Imagine the impact of every production team member knowing they have at their fingertips guidance on how to set themselves up to win, from the very first minute of their shift to the last? That definitely makes an employee feel supported and successful. That enhances satisfaction and reduces turnover. 

How do these workforce improvements impact a business’s bottom line? 

Redzone customers themselves are telling us about these incredible savings that they’re documenting. There’s a flywheel effect between employee engagement, reduced turnover and increased productivity. We’re seeing rocketing outputs from our customers at the same time that engagement is increasing and turnover is dropping.

How can a baking or snack manufacturer know it’s ready to implement AI? 

You’re ready to leverage an AI tool as soon as you’ve identified a complex question that you can’t answer on your own. In manufacturing, AI is a hot topic right now, but it’s full of rabbit holes to go down. Plants considering using an AI platform need to make sure they are using one that searches through source material that is relevant to them. Nothing is more relevant to a plant than its own production data. Redzone’s Champion AI is a perfect way to enter AI.