Equipment Maintenance Tips for Prolonging the Lifespan of Your Bakery Production Line

Your automated baked goods line adds toppings to thousands of products per day. Your automated bakery equipment makes adding toppings simple and efficient – until one machine randomly stops working, bringing the production line to a halt. Why, though? The answer often has to do with improper equipment maintenance of your machines. 

Automated food equipment simplifies the assembly process – from centralizing staffing to producing consistent and high-quality results. However, automated food equipment can only continue improving a company’s food production line as long as it runs well. In this article, we’ll describe some equipment maintenance tips for prolonging the lifespan of your bakery production line. Not only is regular maintenance important to keep the automated machines running smoothly, but it can drastically affect how long their lifespan is, ultimately reducing costs and improving ROI. First, let’s briefly review food equipment available at Quantum that streamlines bakery production lines.

Bakery Food Equipment

Not only are we the leader in automated frozen pizza equipment, but we also offer a selection of bakery food equipment that can help automate baked goods production. Bakery production lines can benefit from our circle placers, dry and granular ingredient applicators, and cheese applicators. These machines also have a range of topping applications, as long as your machines can properly dispense them onto your products.

Circle Placers

Quantum circle placers can apply round, square, and rectangular cardboard onto a conveyor. Cardboard not only protects the product as it travels down the assembly line, but it also helps to ensure that the products remain aligned on the conveyor for the rest of assembly. Both our QTCR1016 and QTFF Series Friction Feeder can place up to 180 circles per minute for quick food assembly. 

Cheese Applicators

At Quantum, we offer different cheese applicators that can apply other toppings as well, such as IQF ingredients and other dry ingredients. Waterfall application is an effective mode of topping application that ensures machines apply toppings to the whole product. While some ingredients may be lost, our cheese applicators have a reclaim system that recycles and reapplies unused toppings to save on material costs. 

Dry and Granular Ingredient Applicators

Quantum dry and granular ingredient applicators are ideal for dispensing dry ingredients and granules (like sprinkles), spices, seeds, salt, parmesan cheese, and similar ingredients. Our QTCA1000 Series and QTGA5 Series can fit over existing conveyor lines for easy implementation and our QTGA3000 Series has a conveyor component that allows it to be easily added to an existing line. Our dry and granular ingredient applicators can evenly apply toppings to baked goods.

Now that we’ve listed some of our automated bakery equipment, let’s dive into industrial food equipment maintenance tips to keep your automated machinery running efficiently, and for as long as possible.  

Industrial Food Equipment Maintenance Tips

Regularly maintaining and cleaning automated industrial food equipment is important in sustaining its efficiency, prolonging its lifespan, and increasing your ROI. Our industrial food equipment maintenance tips include: employing easily-maintained machines, keeping spare parts on hand, addressing system errors right away, regularly checking on machine statuses, and keeping the machines clean. 

1. Employ Easily-Maintained Machines

This first one may seem superfluous, but incorporating easily-maintained machines incentivizes staff to fix them, prolonging the life of your machinery. If your company relies on machines that are harder to repair or require professional tune-ups, not only can this cause serious downtime, but your staff might be less likely to fix the errors right away, especially if repairs are time-consuming and troublesome. In turn, this could cause a significant decrease in your machines’ lifespan. Our automated bakery equipment is easy to regularly maintain in-house by your staff, which helps to prolong the machinery’s lifespan.

2. Keep Spare Parts on Hand

Keeping spare parts on hand also helps to prolong the lifespan of your industrial food equipment. Equipment maintenance is exceptionally faster and more convenient when staff can easily access spare parts and maintenance equipment. Having to order parts not only increases  downtime but may decrease staff motivation for fixing machines as soon as possible. Fixing and replacing parts right away prolongs the lifespan of your machinery and keeps production running. Use it or lose it! Procrastinating about maintenance and repair risks further machine damage. 

3. Address System Errors ASAP

Even if a machine doesn’t need a part replaced or hasn’t broken down, system errors can occur and the machines can sound off alerts. If your machinery has a display and shows an error, we recommend that you address these errors as soon as possible. While these errors may not be stopping the assembly line, leaving them unaddressed can cause more serious and permanent mechanical issues. Solving even the simplest and non-disruptive system errors can prolong the lifespan of your bakery production line. 

4. Keep the Machines Clean

Keeping your automated machines clean and free from ingredient build-up is not only critical for responsible food safety to prevent foodborne illnesses, but it helps to extend the lifetime of your production line. Regularly cleaning machinery prevents ingredient build up and harmful mold and bacteria growth. Quantum automated equipment is very easy to clean, which helps to keep the equipment in tip-top shape for a longer lifespan. Keeping your machinery clean and well-maintained also helps to conserve the high quality of your food products. 

5. Regularly Check on Machine Statuses

Our Quantum services team recommends regularly checking on machines, even if they aren’t experiencing system errors or breakdowns. While this includes regularly cleaning the machines, it also can entail checking alignment of the conveyor belts and applicators, performance quality checks, and keeping maintenance records. Regular inspection can allow staff to confirm that the machinery is running smoothly and as best as it can. It also serves as preventative maintenance of the equipment before an issue arises. 

Easy Machine Maintenance and Quantum Services

At Quantum Technical Services, we are dedicated to providing efficient automated bakery equipment that is easy to use and maintain. Automating your toppings process helps minimize downtime, especially when machines are consistently cared for. Our Quantum Services make sure that maintaining bakery equipment is simple and quick. Decrease downtime with Quantum Technical Services today.