Baking & Snack - November 2018 - 96

DIGITAL CONTROLS

Left: Stringent front-end
controls provide consistency and accuracy to the
baking process.
Focus Works

Right: Interconnecting
equipment remains the
key component to improving the entire process on
production lines.
Sosland Publishing Company

to digital interconnection, speak one language instead of
the Tower of Babel of the past. That's made some previous
service providers irrelevant.
"It's becoming commonplace to the point that what
you didn't see at iba are the technology integrators of 10
years ago whose purpose was to provide that information as a third party," Mr. Kline observed. "That seems to
have disappeared."
He explained that current sensory components are
communicating directly with the bakery's system, and
that telemetry often returns directly to the bakery's host
computer. It's a more seamless process. "You don't require
separate software to integrate the system," he pointed out.
Mr. Kline couldn't stress enough that information is still
directly going to the bakery, not the manufacturer. "There
is still concern giving open access to this technology, not
because of concerns by the equipment manufacturer, but
of concerns that such access opens the computer system
to hacking," he explained. "The security isn't trusted."
Mr. Brixey stressed that information needs to be reliable and readily available both within the plant and
remotely "Having product specifications, bill of materials, set-up information and other asset or product data
available on the plant floor allows associates to perform
at a higher level," he said. "Industry can no longer expect
or accept that employee performance will improve in a
linear fashion as the years of service add up. We must
use the infrastructure available to build specs and libraries that support the operator. OEMs should embed
much of this information like manuals and drawings or
collect it as the equipment operates - like rate, time and
temperature - into an easier-to-use digital format."
Mr. White emphasized that employee skills remain

96 Baking & Snack November 2018 / www.bakingandsnack.com

a real issue. "Automation can remove the complexity of
the operator's tasks. So does removing the tasks of recording process numbers on paper, which we know
many times is 'pencil whipped,' " he said. "In essence,
a system automatically controlling the data flow to and
from the plant floor - and having it monitored and verified - removes errors that can really hurt operations."
With the workforce skills gap, is technology making
the glass half empty or half full? With the most experienced bakers retiring, knowledge transfer provides a
critical opportunity at this juncture in time. "Our goal
is to capture and pass on as much of that experience and
knowledge before it literally walks out the door," Mr.
Burgh said. "By using historical data for continued training, the workforce can constantly improve and learn
regardless of changing team members. Video training
tools are particularly popular with our clients and encourage consistent training for all team members."
However, new employees need a strong foundation in
fundamentals to take advantage of the latest in technology, according to Mr. White. "Our company has software
products that prevent and eliminate operator errors, but
they need to have basic math skills and be able to read in
a known language - even though our systems are multilingual," he said.
Mr. White recommended spending time educating employees and never refusing requests for outside training.
"Remember, improved employees will deliver improved
results, and illiteracy and ignorance in your workforce
can have catastrophic consequences," Mr. White said.
It doesn't matter if it involves data gathering, digital
interconnections, augmented or even virtual technology,
it will become reality sooner than later.

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Baking & Snack - November 2018

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