Digitalization recipe for tomorrow’s pancake – Yummy Bakery

Digitalization recipe for tomorrow’s pancake at Yummy Bakery

The pancakes from Yummy Bakery are 'hot' and end up on the shelves of almost every major retail chain in the country. The secret behind this success? The choice of authentic ingredients and the use of an traditional baking plate. To further grow their business they understood the importance of further digitizing their production lines to lower operational costs and mature product quality monitoring. CTRL Engineering succeeded in retrofitting their pancake dosing line allowing to accurately controlling the weight of each pancake. It results in a saving of 7 to 8% raw materials and a drastically reduce energy cost good for an ROI of less than one year.

CHALLENGE

Yummy Bakery, a world-famous for its tasty pancakes, recognized the need for digitalization to achieve its ambitious growth goals by 2030. They identified several challenges that could be addressed through technology, such as ensuring consistent product quality despite variations in raw material structure and achieving a more uniform shape and weight. They also aimed to reduce waste in raw materials and optimize gas, electricity, and water usage throughout the process. Technology would enable Yummy Bakery to become less reliant on hard-to-find operator expertise, provide more flexibility in batching, and enhance the quality control process through sensors, measurements, and machine software adjustments.

SOLUTION

One of the key steps in the digitalization journey was to map out the existing processes and perform measurements on the production line while analysing data from programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and sensors integrated into the existing line. Based on this assessment, a phased digitalization plan was developed, and the decision was made to focus on the pancake dosing station in the initial phase.

In this phase, a machine retrofit was conducted to convert the pneumatic system to a control system using servo motors. This retrofit enabled precise control over the weight variation of each pancake, compensating the varying dough consistency given they’re mixing up natural products. Simulations were developed to incorporate process and machine dynamics, which were then integrated as virtual sensor into the PLC that controls the machine. Once the entire production line was set up, a cloud platform application was implemented, allowing Yummy Bakery to monitor "smart" machine data. This provided insights into process parameters, production numbers, and enabled the support of machine analytics and predictive maintenance.

RESULT

CTRL engineering’s expertise in tailor made machine building and digitalization enables Yummy Bakery to produce nowadays accurately dosed pancakes with minimal weight variation. By precisely controlling the servo motors and baking plate speed, the pancakes are poured much closer to each other, ensuring consistent quality and higher throughput. Additionally, maintenance can be scheduled according to production demands, optimizing downtime. Yummy Bakery has achieved an 8% reduction in raw material consumption, and the return on investment for the digitalization project was less than one year.

Hence, by embracing CTRL engineering’s expertise in tailor made machine building and virtual engineering, Yummy Bakery has been able to strengthen its market position as to enhance product quality, reduce waste, optimize maintenance, and achieve significant cost savings.