Baking & Snack - August 2010 - 76

DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS

Solutions
BY SHANE WHITAKER
roduction and packaging consume so much of
most bakeries' capital spending plans that distributing finished goods is often an afterthought. In
fact, bakers may be using the same distribution
practices put in place decades ago, although they have invested in processing equipment to produce a greater quality and quantity of baked foods or purchased new packaging systems to offer a wider variety of package formats.
"The fact of the matter is warehouse management systems
(WMSs) have a lot to offer in the industrial baking industry
and the US market is still learning that fact," said Marc Braun,
president of US operations, Pcdata, Inc., Cambridge, MA.
No single metric indicates that a bakery should start
looking for a WMS, according to Joel Miller, business analyst, Pcdata. However, if an operation has productivity or
accountability issues or needs to address order filling accuracy, a company most likely would benefit from a new
distribution system. "Productivity, accountability and traceability are the three items we focus on when introducing our
Distrib distribution software to a new customer," he added.
The two main reasons bakeries approach ToolBox Software North America, Inc., Scottsdale, AZ, about its paperless dispatching system is because they have space and/
or time issues in their shipping department, according to
Ralf Ulmer, president, US operations. ToolBox focuses
totally on bakery, he added. "We never tried and don't intend to get involved in other industries," Mr. Ulmer added.
"Everything we do is 100% customized for the baking industry, so all the features are the result of more than 550
bakeries around the world using this system day by day."
Genesta, Rockwall, TX, offers a hands-free speech-based
system to improve efficiencies in staging and loading of finished baked foods for distribution. "We have taken traditional data collection methods, speech recognition and barcode scanning and automated the distribution process and
made it hands free," said Kelson Elam, managing partner

Warehouse
management
systems for fresh
bakeries improve
order accuracy
and reduce labor.

at Genesta. "Imagine sorting donuts and pastries with icing
on them, having an order sheet there is not very conducive
because your hands are covered in icing."
Bakeries should consider adding a WMS if they have
issues with order inaccuracy or high labor costs and cannot access reliable inventory information quickly and
transparently, according to Laura Worker, marketing
manager, Westfalia Technologies, Inc., York, PA.
DEVELOPING SOLUTIONS. ToolBox customizes systems to meet bakeries' specific needs, according to Mr.
Ulmer. "Of the 550 installations we have completed no
two run exactly the same way. We must see a bakery in
operation, spend the necessary time there to understand
how it works and see problems, and then we come up
with a concept and solution," he said.
The company doesn't consider itself a typical software
company. "We don't just hand off software, give the client a
little training and believe our job is done," Mr. Ulmer pointed out. "Instead, we consider ourselves more of a standard
equipment supplier, and we implement our systems. Our engineers
are on-site until the system is up and
running the way it should be."
ToolBox's dispoTool works with
touch-screen PCs and/or handheld devices on which warehouse
employees call up the products.
Multicolor displays, installed on a
flexible rail system, denote staging
areas. A shipper scans or enters a
▶ A module for this warehouse management system actually scans racks as they are
moved from the loading dock onto a delivery
vehicle to help with tracking product as it
leaves the bakery.
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August 2010 / BAKING & SNACK

Baking & Snack - August 2010

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