Baking & Snack - August 2022 - 50

FLOWERS FOODS/DKB
to meet the growing demand for DKB loaves. In 2021, its
first year in operation, it produced more than 60 million
lbs. The facility is USDA Organic Certified, Non-GMO
Project verified and kosher certified in keeping with the
DKB brand attributes.
Because the bakery formerly housed a continuous
mix system, the only remaining pieces of equipment
are the proofer and tray stackers, and there are already
plans to replace the tray stackers. The rest of the bakery's
equipment is entirely new.
Ingredients - all organic, of course - are delivered
by truck and stored in the warehouse. Two Pfening indoor
silos store 100,000 lbs of whole wheat flour each
and one indoor split silo stores 50,000 lbs of white flour
on each side. The rest of the major ingredients are stored
in supersacks and scaled by a Pfening system, and minor
ingredients are autoscaled.
The dough is mixed in one of three Shaffer tilt-bowl
mixers that output 2,000 lbs of dough every 7 minutes.
Typically, Mr. Benton pointed out, Flowers' bakeries
only have two mixers, but DKB doughs take longer to
mix and must always be moving.
" The mix takes longer and needs more attention because
the dough has a lot of gluten in it, " he explained.
" It takes a lot of development time because other than
Lynchburg Organic Baking Co. is highly automated with dough
automatically discharging from the mixers into troughs, which are
hoisted to empty the dough onto the overhead conveyor to the
chunker.
Employee training grants a
feeling of ownership
Before the Lynchburg Organic
Baking Co. began making Dave's
Killer Bread (DKB), it was a continuous
mix Sunbeam operation, a
completely different process with
different equipment and required
a different skill set from its workforce.
The dedicated workforce in
Lynchburg is one of the reasons
the plant was chosen to take on
Dave's Killer Bread capacity, but it
required educating the employees
on a much different process.
" They had to be completely retrained
on what a bread moulder
was because they didn't have
one before, so the process was
drastically different, " said Robert
Benton, executive vice president
of network optimization, Flowers
Foods, Thomasville, Ga. " Those
employees became bread people. "
Mr. Benton accomplished this
in several ways. First, Tim Gentry,
vice president of manufacturing,
and the startup team worked to
train the employees on the new
equipment. For the new ingredients
and formulating knowledge,
Flowers brought in the ingredient
suppliers to teach classes on the
functionality of the new ingredients.
Equipment
vendors also helped
train employees to go from the
previous bakery's very manual
controls to the digital HMIs they
would be using. Mr. Benton
pointed out, however, that the
maintenance crew became an
integral part of the startup for
several reasons.
" They had to learn all new
equipment, so it became critical
as we built the bakery that
they were part of building it back
together, " he said. " So when we
brought in a bread divider, they
helped put it in, and then when
we built the oven, they helped put
the shelves in. "
This experience of actually helping
install the equipment gave
the maintenance crew an intimate
knowledge of how the equipment
works as well as ownership over
the new bakery.
50 Baking & Snack August 2022 / www.bakingbusiness.com
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Baking & Snack - August 2022

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