While industrial automation solutions have become essential to the successful operations of countless commercial bakeries across the globe, many are still weighing the pros and cons of automating their processing lines.
Modern bakeries are facing high pressures and want to optimize their manufacturing facilities with fewer resources while reducing their operating costs. This allows them to get more done with fewer labor resources.
One of the best ways to achieve these ends is by implementing automation software that provides businesses more visibility and insight into their supply chains, increased productivity with lower labor overhead, and improved worksite safety. Recent studies show that over half of all manufacturing companies surveyed plan to implement some form of automation to their facilities this year if they haven’t already.
Since bakery automation is swiftly becoming the new norm, let’s explore seven key benefits you’ll realize after automating your manufacturing plant.
1. Improved quality control
Your plant incorporates dozens of processes and touchpoints before your bakery item arrives at the final outcome your team worked tirelessly to develop. As your techniques become more complex, monitoring food consistency and quality while preventing contamination poses several new obstacles you may not have previously encountered.
Ingredient quality is crucial, but even more important is ensuring that you’re not adding expired and outdated materials to your products because your outmoded, disparate systems cannot sufficiently track their expiration dates. Industrial automation solutions and information controls from EZSoft help you improve line efficiency and consistency while enhancing your food safety protocols.
The best approach for optimizing quality control is the reduce the prospects of human error. Automating allows you to eliminate the unpredictable human element in some areas, the most common source of contamination, along with other costly issues that can lead to unplanned downtime and impact your brand image.
2. Better workplace safety
Virtually every food manufacturing environment relies on monotonous, repetitive motion tasks to keep their lines running. Relying exclusively on human operators to handle these duties introduces several potential hazards to your production lines while needlessly placing your employees at risk.
Manufacturing accidents are on the rise, and most injuries are attributable to workplace falls, heavy lifting, and improper operation of plant machinery. When you upgrade your bakery production lines by introducing modern bakery automation equipment, you’ll reduce your human intervention requirements while both food and workplace safety.
3. Advanced analytics
Improving your business’s targeting capabilities is one of the best strategies for ensuring that you’re always providing customers with the value they expect. Industrial automation software and information controls supply you with the advanced analytics you need to develop active client profiles and predictive systems that help you forecast and evaluate future profits.
These analytics and reporting tools also help you identify any observable shifts in consumer behaviors and buying preferences, giving you powerful and in-depth insight into the latest market trends. This additional visibility will help you reach your customers at the right time. It allows you to make timely, data-driven product development decisions, even in a reasonably unpredictable market.
4. Unsurpassed end-to-end traceability
Food recalls have been climbing in recent years, impacting food manufacturers of every size and ilk. These incidents are costly, which is why more and more companies have been turning to automated solutions as means of preventing them.
Like market research, the modern analytics tools provided by AI allow you to trace all your ingredients, from farm to fork. These tracking systems let you head off potentially serious problems at the pass before they escalate. The software gives you a means of pinpointing where a contaminated or recalled item is headed.
End-to-end traceability like this means that you can prevent spoiled items sourced to your facility from hitting retailer shelves and causing foodborne illnesses in your customers. Automation not only safeguards the wider public through enhanced tracking and improved sanitization, but it also safeguards your brand’s image from negative PR associated with a product recall.
5. Increased production efficiency with fewer labor resources
Many industrial bakeries want to increase their throughput, but the labor market is such that they simply can’t find the human resources to achieve this objective. Our next-generation process control systems allow you to boost your throughput considerably without adding more human operators.
Your bakery lines rely on repetitive motion tasks that are, foremost, dangerous to humans and only invite human error and other contamination issues at your plant. Moreover, roles of this kind have become increasingly difficult to fill.
Fortunately, recent developments in bakery automation equipment are much more efficient at handling repetitive motion tasks at your site. Unlike human operators, these systems can run 24 hours a day, and they require breaks, vacations, and other costly benefits.
Your throughput gains depend on your specific application and processes. With that aside, however, most food processors can inspect throughput gains of 10-15 percent gains in their throughput after implementing modern industrial automation software and manufacturing equipment.
6. A substantial reduction in food waste
If you want to improve your supply chain management, starting with a reliable waste reduction strategy is the key. Food waste has always been a vital consideration among processors, and supply chain waste remains a top concern.
Most of your ingredients are perishables and carry short shelf lives when compared to other manufactured goods. The trouble with overstocking ingredients is that this may also lead to unnecessary waste if you don’t use them before their expiry date.
Automating your bakery production lines will give you an end-to-end solution for managing your supply chain. Automation software for food manufacturers provides you with real-time data describing exactly what stock you need at any given moment, allowing you to warehouse only the items you need to meet demand.
Understanding your inventory alignment through automated technology helps bakeries who struggle with food waste make significant strides in reversing this trend.
About EZSoft, Inc.
If you’re just diving into bakery automation and asking yourself where to find the top bakery automation company near me, consider partnering with EZSoft.
We are a leading full-service Systems Integrator of Process Control Systems in Pennsylvania, with decades of experience in all levels of industrial automation, including IT infrastructure.
Learn more about our advanced industrial batch controls and system lifecycle documentation solutions today by completing our online request for contact form or dialing (484) 568-5040 now.
