Baking & Snack - December 2008 - 32

Dedicated
PERFECTION

BY STEVE BERNE
unt Millie's operates seven plants in a 3-state
area to generate more than $200 million in
annual sales. Perfection Bakeries remains
as its corporate entity, but the company has
fully identified itself as Aunt Millie's since 1991. "It
was our way of bring cohesiveness to all our products and brands we acquired in recent years," said
Bohn Popp, vice-president of marketing. Besides its
Sunbeam brand, acquisitions brought numerous, often
competitive, names under the company's control.
This was also a time when the company struggled to
establish a more consistent operating style, according to
management. To gain productivity benefits, the company
shifted production by dedicating plants to specific products, each supplying six distribution centers.
"We needed to develop brand identity," Mr. Popp said.
"We chose Aunt Millie's, until then a very small brand for
only a few items, for this project. Aunt Millie stands for a
home baker, a family baker." During the summer of 1991,
the company placed all its buns and most of its bread
under the Aunt Millie's brand.
The bakeries produce pan and hearth breads, buns,
deli rolls, English muffins and bagels for customers in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. Companywide, the business
operates 10 processing lines, with approximately 60%
of the business in retail/grocery, 25% in club stores and
mass merchandisers and 15% in food service.
The company has always believed in automation. Its
Jackson, MI, plant is described as the company's most
automated with fully computerized formulating and processing operation. "It requires only five people per shift
to produce bread at 140 loaves per minute," said Tony
Dalo, vice-president of manufacturing. "Actually, one of
those five acts as a break relief employee so the plant really only needs four. Mixing is totally lights out, using a
Reimelt major, minor and micro feed system. We have one
employee in makeup and two in packaging and one break
relief person."

HOLDING DOWN THE FORT. The company's headquarters in Fort Wayne, IN, is located on a 3-acre site, the
120,000-sq-ft bakery dates back more than a century, but
multiple additions have been added over the years. The
top floor of the 3-story building houses R&D functions
as well as the quality assurance lab and offices. This plant
bakes only bread - 32 varieties.

ᮡ Proofed bread loaves make their way to the single-lap oven.
The highly automated bakery added a Fleischmann
cream yeast system in 2001. Management believes yeast
in this form is more consistent and easier to handle. It
also saves on bag disposal.
Bread production depends on many APV Baker components. These include three sponge-and-dough mixers,
three cross-grain moulders, a tray-style final proofer, a
single-lap final oven, a depanner, an overhead racetrack
cooler and a post-packaging pattern-former/tray-loading
system with a bottom-up stacker for filled delivery trays.
The sponge mixer receives flour, sifted at delivery

December 2008 / BAKING & SNACK

Baking & Snack - December 2008

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