Baking&Snack International - December 2012 - 6

First of its Kind
Domino’s supplies made-to-order pizza dough balls to franchisees throughout the UK and Ireland, most from its totally automated plant in Milton Keynes, UK, where not one hand touches the process.
by Dan Malovany To help the chain’s stores produce the highest-quality pizzas, Domino’s Pizza Group plc, Milton Keynes, UK, operates under a couple of theories that have been thoroughly tested and finally proven over time. First, the pizza dough balls must always be fresh, never frozen. The pieces are made one day, then rest for 24 hours before they are delivered the next via refrigerated trucks to more than 700 franchise stores from three central commissaries. The second proven theory currently applies only to its flagship production facility, located next to the company’s headquarters in Milton Keynes. Inside the 9,600-sq-m (103,000-sq-ft) plant, not a finger touches the dough from the time it leaves the Reading Bakery Systems Exact continuous mixers until the pieces arrive at the retail stores and are ready to be formed into pizza bases. The process at this highly automated commissary is unique, the only one of its kind in the Domino’s Pizza system, which employs nearly 200,000 in more than 10,000 stores in 73 markets across the globe, according to Gareth Franks, food service director, Domino’s Pizza Group (DPG), which owns Domino’s Pizza UK and Ireland. In fact, production at Milton Keynes is entirely different than the group’s smaller and older commissaries located at Penrith, UK, and Naas, Ireland. “The original method was a quite manual one,” Mr. Franks said. “We evolved the process. At the previously built facilities, we would hand-place dough balls, and that’s still done in most facilities around the world. We’re the only facility with such an automated operation within the Domino’s system anywhere in the world.” Executing the touch-free process wasn’t easy, and making it seamless meant resolving some “teething issues,” he added.

Touch-free operation
The initial planning stages for the facility go back to 2006, when the company served only 400 retail outlets, but its business model predicted rapid growth over the next decade. “Back then, we wanted to improve the process and remove people from touching the product during the production stage,” Mr. Franks said. “People are very important, but the least amount of time that you can have individuals touching the product or involved in the process, the better the quality and consistency of the final product.” Today, that’s exactly what happens on the production floor, and this automation will help the company as it steadily expands to a predicted 1,200 stores by 2021. Additionally, the company may eventually operate more production facilities in Germany, where it purchased a 75% share in the master franchise in that country in 2011 and now has exclusive rights to the market. Although it just started opening stores, the pizza

Domino’s Pizza Group’s totally automated plant in Milton Keynes, UK, features one-of-its-kind technology to produce fresh pizza dough balls without human intervention.

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December 2012

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Baking&Snack International - December 2012

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