Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - December 2008 - (Page 36)

Engineering Management Dear Santa t’s that time of year again. Snow is falling on the northerners, and beachcombers begin donning their windbreakers while hitting the shore. Thanksgiving is over, and it’s time to gear up for that wonderful day in December where we overindulge everyone around us in hopes of seeing a smile. It’s also the time when children write their “Dear Santa” letters, and visions of honey buns dance in their heads. I was walking down 42nd Street in New York City recently and was inspired to write my own letter to Santa seeking some Jeff Dearduff j.dearduff@comcast.net I miracles for the maintenance managers in the industry. So here goes. Dear Santa, It has been a rough year for the baking industry, and I wish for a few things that could help everyone kick off to a better next year. To start, I wish for commodity prices to remain reasonable so that we can gain control of our bottom lines and get back to spending some money on upgrading our bakeries. You see, with the price of ﬂour, sugar and fuel going through the ceiling, many of our companies held off capital expen- ditures this year due to the unpredictable nature of the commodity markets. Many of our engineers had high hopes of replacing some of their older systems, but had to drop back and spend their time keeping their existing processes going. There were probably some spare parts shelves in bakeries that had a chance for a good wipe down as inventory was depleted. Next, I wish for the healing of the economy so that our industry can return to aggressive growth. When that happens, all engineers get to be a part of building new bakeries, buying more equipment and hiring more technicians. A down economy is supposed to be an okay time for food manufacturing, but everyone is still nervous about money and credit, so expansion is slowing. When this gets ﬁxed, we are ready to go. We also hope that bakery owners, especially those who haven’t ventured into robotics in the past, start to think about doing so. That’s because it looks like the next advances in bakery efﬁciencies are coming from the further automation of plants with robots. Personally, my belief is that the robot can be the hardest working, least problematic “employee” we can have, so when we open our imagination to accept these creatures, we will be better off. This will also provide work for an additional group we call RoboTechs, those qualiﬁed people who can set up and service these systems. And, Santa, our workforce picture needs some help. While there are so many people out of work across this country, why is it still tough to ﬁnd people who want to make a career in the baking industry? We could use some more help from you in ﬁguring out how we might promote our industry to those still trying 36 Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - DECEMBER 2008 www.snackandbakery.com http://www.buford.com/sfb http://www.buford.com/sfb http://www.snackandbakery.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - December 2008

Snack Food &�Wholesale Bakery - December 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Now, That’s Haute! Bigger ‘n’ Better But Is It Art? New Products Branching Out Engineering Management Fits to a T Racing to the Finish The Final Word

Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - December 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.