Baking & Snack - August 2017 - 93

OPERATIONS
Minimizing Waste

HOLY SCRAP!
How to keep food in production
and out of the feed bins.
by Joanie Spencer
In a bakery plant, efficiency is the name of the game.
But it's a word that can mean many different things in
various areas of production. When making items such as
cookies and sweet goods, it's vital for bakers to waste as
little dough as possible.
Sometimes that begins before equipment cranks up
... other times even sooner. "For Rademaker, it really
starts for us up front before you even buy the line," said
Eric Riggle, president, Rademaker USA. "Bakers must
understand the entire process so they don't put together
a line and then suddenly think of another product they
have to make and wind up with 35% rework when they
can only use 20% back into the process," he said.
If dough will be left behind, the goal should be trim
or reclaim - that which can be reused - as opposed
to scrap or waste, which eventually winds up as animal
feed. While it's important for bakers to keep waste top of
mind in any area of production, there are some simple
things they should keep in mind to put as much dough
to use as possible.

Starting up, changing over
When focusing on minimizing waste, startup and
changeovers often stand out. To address this issue,

Rademaker designs its equipment for simple setup.
"We sat down with our customers and watched how
they use our machines and set them up," Mr. Riggle
said. "We discovered that the easier, more repeatable
and more consistent we can make it, then right out of
the gate, bakers can save themselves money every day
with quicker changeovers."
To achieve this objective, Rademaker designed its
equipment to allow operators to quickly set up a process with minimal scrap at the startup. "This means the
same product is made each and every time versus trial
and error at the setup phase," Mr. Riggle explained. The
company's new universal makeup line incorporates a
Tooling Assistant Guide on the HMI that shows the
user exactly what coded tool goes where in setting up
the machine.
For Handtmann, Inc., quick-release designs and
custom-made tools simplify and speed up disassembly and cleaning of its cookie depositors, according to
Cesar Zelaya, bakery sales and technology manager.
In some cases, there is just going to be unused dough
in the equipment, no matter how many steps a baker
takes to minimize it. At that point, the best bet is to get
it cleaned out as quickly as possible and move on to the
next product with the least amount of downtime. "Our
depositors have a cleaning mode that will remove all
the dough in the equipment and speed up the disassembly and sanitation for the next product," he said.
Franz Haas Machinery of America also places a
heavy emphasis on equipment that's easy to clean for
quick changeovers. "We're trying wherever possible
to make changeovers tool-less so it's more operator-

Systems such as load
cells monitor the weight
of dough pieces to
ensure consistency.
Rheon

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