Yummy Bakery Digitalization as recipe for tomorrow's pancake

Long story short

Yummy Bakery’s pancakes are a hit and can be found in almost every major supermarket chain in the country. The secret behind their success? The choice of authentic ingredients and the use of a traditional baking plate. To further grow their business, they recognized the importance of digitalization in optimizing their production lines, reducing operational costs, and improving quality control. CTRL Engineering successfully modernized their pancake dosing line, ensuring precise control over the weight of each pancake. This led to a 7-8% reduction in raw material usage and significantly lower energy costs, achieving a return on investment (ROI) of less than a year.

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“From batter to brilliance — automation is the secret ingredient that keeps Yummy Bakery ahead of the game!” 🥞😋”
Sara Geldhof – CEO of Yummy Bakery

From Batter to Breakthrough: Modernizing Pancake Manufacturing

Yummy Bakery, known for its delicious pancakes, acknowledged the need for digitalization to meet its ambitious growth objectives for 2030. They identified several key challenges that could be tackled with technology, including ensuring consistent product quality despite variations in raw material texture, achieving a more uniform shape and weight, reducing raw material waste, and optimizing the use of gas, electricity, and water throughout the production process.

Additionally, Yummy Bakery aimed to reduce its dependency on highly skilled operators, enhance batch processing flexibility, and improve the quality control process by integrating sensors, real-time measurements, and machine software adjustments.

CTRL Engineering’s Recipe for Success

A crucial step in the digitalization process was mapping the existing production processes and analyzing data from PLCs and sensors within the current system. Based on this assessment, a phased digitalization strategy was developed, with the first phase focusing on the pancake dosing station.

In this phase, a machine retrofit was executed, replacing the pneumatic system with a servo motor-based control system. This upgrade allowed precise control over weight variations, compensating for dough consistency fluctuations due to the use of natural ingredients.

Advanced simulations were developed to model both process dynamics and machine behavior, which were then integrated as a virtual sensor within the PLC controlling the machine. Once the entire production line was operational, a cloud-based application was implemented, enabling Yummy Bakery to monitor real-time machine data. This provided valuable insights into process parameters, production figures, and facilitated machine analysis and predictive maintenance.

Results: Boosting Efficiency and Quality

Thanks to CTRL Engineering’s expertise in custom machine building and digitalization, Yummy Bakery can now produce precisely dosed pancakes with minimal weight variation. By accurately controlling the servo motors and the baking plate speed, pancakes are placed closer together, ensuring consistent quality and higher production throughput. Additionally, maintenance scheduling is now optimized based on production demands, minimizing downtime.

Yummy Bakery successfully achieved an 8% reduction in raw material consumption, with a return on investment of less than a year. By embracing CTRL Engineering’s expertise in custom machine development and virtual engineering, Yummy Bakery has strengthened its market position, improved product quality, reduced waste, optimized maintenance, and realized significant cost savings.

Why it matters to you?

In today’s fast-paced market, food manufacturers like Yummy Bakery must embrace digitalization to stay competitive. At CTRL Engineering, we specialize in delivering customized automation and control systems that address the unique challenges of the food and beverage industry. Our cutting-edge technology ensures precision, efficiency, and flexibility, even in high-demand production environments.

With a proven track record of optimizing operations and facilitating scalable growth, we’re ready to help you modernize your production lines and uphold the highest quality standards. Contact CTRL Engineering today to transform your automation vision into reality.