Creating best-in-class baked goods is a complex process that requires both creativity and precision. Utilizing automated bakery equipment is a key ingredient in keeping that process running smoothly, especially for large-scale commercial bakeries like Klosterman.
By automating many of our processes, we can ensure that our customers receive consistent products in every order while also repurposing time that was once needed for manual tasks to focus on coming up with new ways to delight our customers.
Here are some of the most important things to know about how Klosterman Baking Company leverages automation to efficiently create high-quality breads, buns and donuts:
The Role of Automated Bakery Equipment in Quality Control
Automated bakery equipment significantly boosts consistency by ensuring precision. From exact measuring and mixing to carefully monitoring time and temperature, automated baking techniques help to ensure every detail is uniform to create the perfect product, every time.
We know our customers expect their products to have the same taste, texture, and appearance every time, and automation helps bakeries like ours meet these expectations. A primary example of how we meet this standard is through automated scaling, which maintains dough consistency by precisely supplying major ingredients like flour, water, and yeast. This level of accuracy eliminates the variances often found in manual processes, resulting in the exact uniformity and quality our customers look for in every order.
Streamlining Production: Speed and Efficiency
Automation is taking a routine task once performed by a person and replacing it with equipment or technology to improve consistency and output. While bakeries once had to rely fully on manual baking processes, as baking technology has evolved, bakeries now have options to choose how manual or automated they want their production to be. Automation utilizes equipment and technology to perform routine repetitive tasks to help streamline the process. Slower speeds are often required to accommodate manual aspects of the baking.
For example, checking the scaling weight of dough pieces without automation is performed by manually removing them intermittently throughout the production run to weigh. The operator then makes adjustments to the equipment as needed to ensure the scaling weight is consistently hitting the target. Having equipment with the ability to automatically monitor the scaling weight allows the line to gain speed and efficiency because the equipment is programmed to seamlessly adjust to hit the target weight in real time so there is no delay between when a variance is detected and when it is corrected.
Enhancing Food Safety
Automation can play a significant role in food safety by decreasing the number of times baked goods need to be handled by a person throughout the baking process, which lessens the possibility of bacterial contamination and allergen cross-contact due to direct human handling. The benefit of minimizing sources of direct physical contact to known controlled points allows our team to adequately schedule time and resources for sanitation requirements in these concentrated areas to proactively safeguard against potential risk to the consumer.
For example, automating temperature checks at key points in the process, like at the proofer and oven, limits the number of times a person comes into contact with the product which helps reduce the opportunity for contamination or alteration.
Scaling for the Future
When scaling for the future, automation can be an achievable way to meet increased product demand. Implementing automation into an existing line typically can happen more quickly and can be a more cost-effective way to scale up production than it is to build a new line.
Automation assists the Klosterman team’s look toward future growth; not only does it improve the ability to meet increased demand in peak seasons by ensuring necessary resources are available, but it allows the team to have a full understanding of the production line’s capabilities, the products it can run, and the available line time. This data helps identify future projects that target enhancing efficiency, line speed, quality improvements, and food safety, while providing a clear picture of where further automation is possible and how it fits into existing lines. This ensures that we have the resources we need to steadily increase our production and sales as our business grows over time.
While automation drives our efficiency, we remain deeply committed to the human element of the baking process. We view automation as an ethical tool to handle the repetitive, physically demanding tasks that don’t require human intuition. This strategic shift frees up our talented team to focus on high-impact areas that technology cannot replicate: research and development, frontline quality assessment, and the specialized projects that ensure our customers receive the best possible experience.
Partnering With Klosterman
At Klosterman Baking Company, we have invested in automating certain steps in our production process to improve product quality and consistency, as well as to help us better meet customer demand. We have found benefits in leveraging the power of automation with our workforce in mind by providing a working environment with a less intense amount of physical labor. Explore our comprehensive baking services to learn more about how our approach can help you achieve your business goals.
