We spoke with a large baker from Germany. He wants to automate several parts of his production and thus make it more efficient. In his production, he makes rolls, pretzel pastries and breads in different production lines. In each of these, the dough pieces arrive by means of a conveyor belt and are placed on a tray. The tray is then placed in the oven and, after baking, stored on a rack to cool. Previously, all these production steps were carried out by employees. This resulted in a lot of idle time and unnecessary costs.
We took a look at the production facility on site. We found that there was little space on the individual production lines and that the processes were not yet optimally coordinated. Thus, the employees always had too much or too little to do, because a few batches of dough always arrived at once, followed by a long pause.