Part of standing out in the frozen pizza industry is choosing the right equipment, including things like infeed systems and conveyor systems. After all, your food processing abilities can only match the quality of the equipment you use. As automation becomes the industry standard, keeping up is essential to stand out to consumers.
One of the many things you need to consider regarding your products is ingredient alignment. Product alignment can make or break your entire production process, potentially leading to quality issues and hidden expenses.
At Quantum Technical Services, we understand just how much sauce placement accuracy matters, which is why we offer several automated equipment options to help you achieve it.
What is an Infeed System?
A popular option for pizza automation, where the goal is product alignment, is the use of an infeed system. An infeed system ensures proper product placement for flighted conveyors, automating the process of lining up products for accuracy.
An infeed system helps to create a continual flow of products without the need for manual labor. It helps to speed up production while eliminating the risk of human error and quality issues.
At Quantum Technical Services, we offer an infeed orientation conveyor specifically designed for high-speed production. It features stainless steel construction, polyurethane belting, and multiple lane configurations.
An added benefit of our infeed orientation conveyor is that it comes with touchscreen control. The user-friendly touchscreen settings allow operators to adjust things like conveyor speed, production rate, and system diagnostics.
Infeed Systems vs. Other Conveyor Systems
Infeed systems provide many benefits for frozen pizza manufacturers, whether you want to increase speed, quality, or reproducibility. However, other conveyor systems offer different benefits that may or may not suit your needs.
For instance, at Quantum Technical Services, we offer several conveyor models that automatically feed products into your machines. Some of these models have a super sanitary design or have reclaim abilities to reduce ingredient waste.
An added benefit of choosing Quantum Technical Services for your conveyor needs is that our systems offer custom lengths and widths to fit any type of production line.
Here are some of the other types of conveyor systems we offer:
- QC5 flat belt conveyor
- QTBF bulk feed conveying system
- QTCC series
- QC20 series
- Reclaimed conveyor
- Wire belt conveyor with product reclaim
- CONV 4 series
How Conveyor Systems Impact Pizza Automation
Both infeed systems and conveyor systems ultimately affect the quality of the products you create. That is why it’s essential that you do your research to understand which systems you need for your production line.
Here are just a few examples of how these types of systems can impact your entire pizza automation process.
Product Alignment
A common production problem frozen pizza manufacturers face is product alignment. Choosing the right automated conveyor system helps to ensure alignment and accuracy at high speeds. This removes much of the risk associated with human error and ensures every other step of production can move smoothly.
Production Speed
Most frozen pizza manufacturers invest in automated conveyor systems to speed up production. After all, it’s difficult to significantly increase production if you are completely or even partially reliant on manual labor.
Automated conveyor systems provide endless capabilities to speed up production with less risk of damaging the quality of your products. Having adjustable speed settings also allows you to customize production depending on demand and popularity.
Consistent Quality
Quality consistency goes hand in hand with alignment and sauce placement accuracy in large-scale production. However, aside from alignment, many other aspects of production can negatively impact quality.
Conveyor systems can make or break your ability to maintain high-quality products, as they impact every step of production from start to finish. Choosing the right conveyor allows you to produce at a larger scale while maintaining the quality that your consumers know and trust.
Scalability
No matter how well your team operates, you will always run into bottlenecks if you don’t invest in an automated production line. Automated conveyor systems are especially crucial for scaling production by enabling you to upgrade your entire production line.
Designing your production line with smart infeed and conveyor systems also protects against things like labor shortages.
Sauce Placement Accuracy: Why It Matters For Frozen Pizza Production
Now that you know why conveyor systems have such a huge impact on production, what about sauce placement? Making sure all of your frozen pizza ingredients maintain alignment can have a bigger impact than you may think.
Consumer Trust
Since the frozen pizza industry has become so saturated over the past few decades, standing out isn’t an option; it’s essential. Part of how you stand out and maintain recognition is by gaining consumer trust. Although many frozen pizza options are available, they don’t always deliver the quality consumers look for.
Sauce accuracy has a bigger impact on the consumer’s experience than you may think. For one thing, ingredient placement affects flavor when there is less or more sauce on each pizza. Misaligned sauce and toppings can also give the consumer a bad impression, reducing their trust in the quality of the products you produce.
Product Appearance
Besides damaging consumer trust, misaligned pizza sauce completely alters how your products appear. New consumers may look at these products and automatically assume they are low quality, especially when compared to your competitors.
You have to remember that appearance is everything and is usually what impacts the consumer’s decision when trying new products.
Hidden Costs
Believe it or not, something as simple as sauce inaccuracy can lead to hidden expenses. Although misaligned sauce may waste only a small amount of product at a time, it adds up, especially during high-speed production.
Sauce misalignment can even lead to entire products going to waste at the end of production. Additionally, if it causes consumers to choose other pizzas over yours, it will lead to more extensive financial repercussions.
Production Downtime
If placement issues aren’t caught early on during production, they can result in significant downtimes. You may have to shut everything down temporarily to figure out where the problem is occurring and how to fix it.
Downtime can become very costly and damage efficiency, and you may even have to remake products, negatively impacting your output.
Upscale Your Automation Production Line With Quantum Smart Equipment
Producing high-quality frozen pizzas isn’t always as simple as it may seem; it takes time and trial and error. Especially for food processing companies looking to scale production, you will need to test out which equipment works best to maintain alignment, quality, and efficiency.
When upgrading or replacing equipment, the most important type to examine is your conveyor systems. Infeed systems and conveyor systems are the backbone of any production line, impacting every other step of production either positively or negatively.
At Quantum Technical Services, we have gone above and beyond to create cutting-edge automation technology to help improve production lines. Our pizza automation technology can help you speed up production without sacrificing quality or reproducibility. Contact our team today to learn more.