Food Maker's Batch System Upgrade Expands Process Flexibility

Bread is on nearly every restaurant menu. Sandwich makers, for instance, roll through millions of cases of bread each year. Behind the scenes, industrial food manufacturers, such as Tolleson, Arizona-based Southwest Baking Company produce more than 2 million cases of bread annually to keep sandwich makers and other restaurants in business.

Southwest Baking’s bread-making process begins in raw material receiving, where ingredients such as flour, yeast and salt are stored in holding bins until transferred into the batching system. The batching system draws the raw materials from holding bins into an industrial mixer where ingredients are combined. The mixture then moves into production where the bread product is formed and frozen before being packaged, palletized and shipped to distribution centers.

Limited to an outdated, proprietary batch system, Southwest Baking could run only one batch every eight minutes. This kept the factory at only 85 to 90% capacity, based on the machinery’s production power. To meet growing demand, the company required an intuitive solution for improved flexibility.

Batch Challenges

Adding to their growth restrictions, the company was experiencing five to six hours of downtime per month at a cost of thousands of dollars per hour. Sometimes a downtime event would last up to a full day or more while a lone programmer tried to fix the problem. 

“When the programmer left the company, knowledge of the system left with him,” says Robert Wroblewski, plant engineer, Southwest Baking. “Our employees didn’t know how to operate [it], leaving us to wait hours for outside support when issues occurred.”

The proprietary platform wasn’t scalable, so Southwest Baking couldn’t expand process lines for future growth. “Beyond scalability, we’d continuously run into situations when new equipment needed to be added or the procedures in our batch process had changed, causing us valuable time reprogramming, starting up and testing before run time,” Wroblewski adds.

In addition, the company’s outdated platform had limited reporting capabilities. Reports were restricted to pulling in data from raw materials receiving and were not accurate or collected consistently. Operators had to gather the data manually at various intervals in the process, leaving room for human error. The system also could store only a few days of data.

Southwest Baking required an easily supported batch solution that was sustainable over the long term and that could track and report critical process data accurately.

Standardized Solution

Southwest Baking collaborated with ECS Solutions Inc.  a Recognized System Integrator in the Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork™ program to help design and implement a replacement for the limited legacy system.

After assessing a number of vendors, Southwest Baking and ECS Solutions chose to standardize on a flexible batch recipe management system using FactoryTalk^® Batch software from Rockwell Automation (Figure 1). The company upgraded its control system to Allen-Bradley^® ControlLogix^® controllers with an advanced HMI interface and process historian.

“With the new system, we can finally add, change or expand processes as we need,” explains Wroblewski. “Our improved flexibility and the associated cost savings alone helped pay for the system in just one year.”

In addition, the new system complies with S88 standards, allowing operators to make modifications to batch procedures and changes to controller codes more easily.

Enhancing operator functionality, the updated platform lets operators perform maintenance and troubleshooting without tapping outside programmers. Intuitive displays make the system easy to operate and increase insight to the full batch process.

As part of the new solution, Southwest Baking now has a visualization, analysis and reporting portal, allowing operators to view batch process trends — such as material usage, balance of ingredients and delivery accuracy — and make adjustments to recipes easily when needed (Figure 2). The new historian collects almost 200 data points and can store years of data.

A Real Breadwinner

Southwest Baking wanted a reliable system with local support to help increase batch consistency across the facility. The company not only achieved this goal, but exceeded it.

Since implementing the new batch solution, Southwest Baking increased production by 5% — approximately 10 lb. of dough per minute and an additional 400,000 cases of bread per year.

In addition, the company reduced its cycle time by more than 20%, meaning it can run more batches in the same time frame. “With our old system, we were running eight batches every hour. We now run 10 batches an hour,” says Wroblewski.

Downtime is almost a thing of the past. Southwest Baking has reduced downtime from an average of one hour of downtime per event to a couple of minutes of downtime per event.

The new batch system empowers operators at the plant level to respond to system errors when they arise. “Our operators are now the first responders at our facility,” says Wroblewski. “They understand the software and have direct insight into the process. In fact, nine times out of 10, they know how to fix the issue themselves — and if they don’t, local support is a phone call away.”

Additionally, the improved information and reporting accuracy helps the company maintain consistent recipes and reduce the amount of wasted ingredients.

Southwest Baking no longer is limited in flexibility. The scalability of the batch platform allows for additional process lines to be integrated easily and the overall baking process to grow with the company. 

Learn more about Rockwell Automation Food & Beverage Solutions.

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