Baking & Snack - March 2016 - 34

GONNELLA BAKING

hearth and panned breads and rolls, which are shipped
to regional and national foodservice chains, c-stores,
supermarket in-store bakeries and grocery outlets scattered throughout the country.
Together, Mr. Marcucci pointed out, these two complementary initiatives strive to satisfy the seemingly
unabated appetite for specialty and artisan-style breads
among customers of all sizes in recent years. "Gonnella
has always been recognized as a baker of high-quality
specialty breads," he said. "We like to say we were baking
artisan breads more than 100 years before the term became popular. We've always been an artisan baker, and
we're now being sought out as a source for these breads."
To better serve its customers, Gonnella last year opened
a new, 34,000-sq-ft centralized distribution center in
Schaumburg just a few miles from its headquarters. The
temperature-controlled facility can store 1,900 pallets.
Common carriers and customers can pick up products for
national warehouse distribution. Around 30 routes serve
local customers in addition to third-party distributors.

All stages in place

Aurora shows off its colors
Gonnella Baking's transformation of its Aurora, IL, fresh
bakery reflects the best of greenfield and brownfield
projects all in one. During the past two years, the company expanded its operation to build a high-volume
bread and bun line with the latest bells and whistles in
programmable controls. At the same time, it remodeled
the existing 70-year-old facility and added a significant
amount of hearth baking capacity.
However, it's not often that companies have the opportunity to go "green" and "brown" at the same time,
noted Michael Redick, vice-president, special operations.
"A combination of brownfield and greenfield is where
you have a manufacturing presence and are looking to
consolidate, upgrade or technologically improve what
you do," he explained. "That's what happened here.
We were looking at adding capacity and consolidating
manufacturing facilities. The physical building here was
not capable of handling expansion to a second line, so
we added a greenfield piece to the back."
A greenfield facility, he observed, should not be for
current needs but for future expansion of operation to
add capacity, create new products or streamline distribution costs - maybe all of the above.
"A greenfield plant is great if you are going into a
new area where you never established a manufacturing presence in the past," Mr. Redick said. "If Gonnella
were to expand its operations on the West Coast, for
instance, that would likely be a greenfield plant."

Ramping up capacity at the Aurora bakery took a twopronged approach that combined intensive research
during the planning stage with improvisational thinking
during the execution phase.
For 18 months starting in 2012, Gonnella's project
management team began partnering with select key vendors - specifically AMF Bakery Systems, Shick Solutions,
Stewart Systems and Workhorse Automation - leaving
no stone unturned as it scouted out the latest in technology by visiting bakeries across the US, according to
Michael Lucchesi, Aurora plant operations manager.
The team then turned to consultant Marron Hak,
founder and owner, Industrial Bakery Engineering, Inc.,
for assistance. For the existing building, Mr. Hak recommended removing and reshuffling older equipment in
the mixing area to create space for two automated string
lines that will double the output of the recently consolidated Chicago bakery's hearth operations. Such a task
wasn't easy, especially since most of the work had to be
done during production or in those rare two- to threeday down periods.
"It was challenging to undergo such an expansion while
serving our customer base," Mr. Lucchesi said. "It was a tremendous amount of work making changes such as expanding the flour system, while operating on a daily basis."
To enhance labor efficiencies on the new high-speed
continuous line, the bakery created centralized operator
Above: While increasing production rates by providing on-the-fly cross splitting,
a programmable, nonstop water splitter also eliminates potential product
damage that can occur when proofed dough is abruptly stopped.
Vito Palmisano

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