Pro Tip: Collaborate to ensure a baking maintenance crew produces elevated results at a high speed and with precision.

There are certain events in the month of May that tend to grab my attention. With an upbringing in Indiana and being a former car racer myself, the Indianapolis 500 has always been a must-see event for me.

Each year, there are stories that grab headlines and a few that teach us lessons when we choose to pay attention. The 2025 session of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing is no different.

The 500-mile race requires several weeks of practice that follows many months of preparation. The week before the big day, the participants attempt to qualify for the best starting position. There are trials and errors, quick laps and crashes, and heroes and heartbreaks. This year, there was a story that caused me to reflect on what we do for a living in baking industry maintenance and conduct a little comparison.

At noon on May 17, experienced Indy Car driver Colton Herta was attempting to qualify. Even knowing there are other chances to qualify for a better position, these drivers always put it all on the line. In this case, at 12:05 p.m., the car wiggled, and he lost control, hit a wall, flipped over and slid to a stop on the racing surface. The car was destroyed.

At 5:50 p.m. on the same day, Herta went out and attempted to qualify again in a car that was assembled that afternoon from that same broken car and some new parts. Although he had not turned a lap in this rebuilt car until this qualifying attempt, he was successful and comfortably in the race line up.

This story is not so much about what the driver did, but rather what the mechanics, engineers and technicians accomplished. They set their sights on putting a car back together in a short amount of time. These are precision machines where every nut, bolt and dimension must be correct. They completed this and delivered a product the driver could comfortably strap into without even testing it.

So how does this story relate to the baking industry? Many times, we are faced with mechanical issues in bakeries that require some level of intervention by mechanics to improve results. Too many times, we make excuses that we cannot get to a problem immediately because we do not have the parts, the time or the resources to deploy.

How can that be? Is it possible that we just do not make it important? Is it possible that we just do not understand the importance? What would happen if we all worked together and planned and performed the repairs in the best way for the moment?

The race to the checkered flag is no different than the race to profitability in a bakery. When the maintenance effort, or lack thereof, occurs and the operations team is left limping along, profitability suffers.

Maintenance leaders and technicians need to understand that their efforts critically impact the bottom line of a business. Profitability is what provides future pay raises and budget increases for better care in the days ahead.

Bakery maintenance is critical to a company’s success, but it’s not all that matters. What matters is that a bakery line produces baked goods at elevated levels, at full speed and with precision. Effort is expected and appreciated all the time.

The maintenance function in a bakery is usually a key factor in qualifying for more new business, higher profitability and overall business growth. Be part of the team and help keep the business in the race.

Jeff Dearduff is owner of JED Manufacturing Services who provides “Bakery Guy Tips” to those everyday people working in production, maintenance and engineering. Connect with him on LinkedIn.