Whether your company is a new name in the baked goods industry or it’s a seasoned business, learning how to continually optimize your bakery production line can bolster the success of your label. Keeping current with industry standards and competitors’ strategies prepares any food business for excelling in the industry. Optimizing production workflows includes knowing what the best layouts are for bakery production line equipment. Quantum Technical Services is the leading name in the industry. Here, we’ll discuss our recommendations for the best equipment layouts for optimized efficiency. But first, we’ll start by mentioning some benefits of bakery automation. These are always worth reviewing because of how crucial automation is in the competitive food industry.
Benefits of Bakery Automation
Bakery automation has revolutionized the way brands prepare their baked goods. Although there are numerous benefits of production line automation, we’ll just focus on a few here – streamlining operations, high quality and consistency, and future-proofing your business. We can’t stress enough how important automation is in meeting high demand and keeping up with competitors.
Streamlines Operations
Bakery automation simplifies production operations. By improving efficiency, boosting output rates, and reducing production errors, automated bakery production line equipment streamlines operations all throughout the assembly process.
Results in High Quality and Consistency
Because automated bakery production line equipment produces the same great results every time, you can count on bakery automation to assemble high-quality products that are consistent. This is especially important for meeting customer expectations, as quality and consistency increase customer trust. Because automation replaces a large part of manual assembly, it significantly reduces error, resulting in more products that pass quality control.
Future-Proofs Business
Another important benefit of bakery automation is that it future-proofs any business. At Quantum, our automated equipment is built to have a long lifespan with the proper care and adapts to your business as needs change. Automated equipment can require significant investment and companies want to be confident that they can use the equipment as long as possible. With Quantum equipment, your company can trust that the machinery will meet your company’s business needs.
Streamlining operations, high quality, consistency, and future-proofing are all ways that automated bakery production line equipment can transform a food company. But what are the best layouts for bakery equipment services so that companies can achieve these benefits? We’ll explore production line strategy next.
Strategizing Bakery Equipment Services
Of course, every food brand is different. Different companies have different recipes, methods, and production requirements that determine what their assembly line will look like. Order of operations may also differ as well, depending on brand specifications. However, there are common types of bakery equipment that help brands create unique products – which we offer at Quantum. They include circle placers, cheese applicators, and dry/granular ingredient applicators. Although business needs differ, we recommend using these bakery equipment services in this order. Let’s look at why.
Circle Placers
Even though they’re not ingredient applicators, circle placers are a key part of any bakery production line. At Quantum, we offer circle placers that can dispense a range of sizes and shapes of cardboard to support your products during assembly. Cardboard circles, squares, and rectangles are critical components of the assembly process because they help keep products aligned throughout assembly and they protect the products during production and transportation. This is why circle placers should be first in production lines. Cardboard circles help maintain the quality of your products from assembly to shelf life.
Cheese Applicators
Applicators can dispense cheeses onto savory bakery items like muffins or breads. We recommend cheese applicators be stationed earlier on in the production line because shredded cheeses create a great base layer for other toppings. At Quantum, our cheese applicators can dispense other toppings as well, such as vegetables, dry ingredients like herbs and spices, and IQF ingredients. This added versatility allows your brand to fully customize its products as needed.
Dry/Granular Ingredient Applicators
Our dry/granular ingredient applicators can dispense the dry ingredients as described above as well as granular ingredients like seeds, sprinkles, salt, granulated cheeses, and similar ingredients. These applicators are best for later in the production line because of the type of ingredients they dispense. Since these applicators and our cheese applicators have considerable versatility and are easy to move around, your company can easily rearrange them to assemble products unique to your brand. This flexibility is key in optimized ingredient use.
So we’ve talked about circle placers, cheese applicators, and dry/granular ingredient applicators. What about bakery equipment services in between? Let’s explore conveyor systems next.
Implementing Conveyor Systems
Conveyor systems are also important types of bakery production line equipment that improve productivity. Conveyor systems have many different functions including alignment, infeeding, ingredient compression, reclaim, and more. The conveyor systems that your brand implements highly depend on the workflow of your production line. Here are just some of the types of conveyor systems we offer at Quantum:
- Bulk Feed and Infeed Conveyors – Proper product and ingredient alignment Automatically feed product
- Flat Belt and Cantilevered Conveyors – General assembly line efficiency for new and existing assembly lines
- Compression Conveyors – Advanced ingredient application thickness control
- Reclaim Conveyors – Rescue unused ingredients for reapplication
- Wirebelt Conveyors – Remove excess product for reclaim
- Water Spray Conveyors – Product protection for freezing or baking
If your company is unsure of which conveyors your products can benefit from, our stellar customer service team can offer expert suggestions. Any of these conveyors can improve production line operations in any order, but we do recommend water spray conveyors for last. Our team can work with your company to decide the best layout strategy for your baked goods label. By employing automated ingredient applicators and conveyors, and working with a strategy unique to your business needs, your brand can excel and exceed customer expectations.
Improve Operations with Quantum
Our team at Quantum Technical Services is dedicated to providing the best automated bakery equipment in the industry. We offer a number of versatile automated solutions that create high-quality products unique to your brand. Contact us today so we can find the right automated bakery equipment tailored to your company’s needs.