From order to despatch: A day’s work in a commercial bakery | Part 1 of 3
Before the first batch reaches the production floor, a commercial bakery has already begun significant preparation.
Customer demand needs to be assessed, priorities set, ingredients checked and the day’s work organised. In a fast-moving food manufacturing environment, information needs to keep pace with the physical operation. By the time production begins, the teams, materials and instructions required for each job need to be ready.
Preparing for production means making sure everything is in place for the bakery to turn the day’s demand into production.
Starting with customer demand
Preparation may begin before production does, with customer orders already waiting to be processed. For bakeries supplying supermarkets, distributors and other large customers, many of those orders may arrive electronically.
Where Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is used, order information can be transferred electronically between the customer and Abel ERP, so a digital order file can create the corresponding customer order without manual re-entry. For businesses using an Acume™ integration, customer purchase orders received as PDF attachments can be processed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), with order data extracted to create the corresponding customer order in Abel.
However orders arrive, the important thing for the bakery is having usable information about what customers need and when they need it. That demand then feeds into decisions about finished stock, production requirements, ingredients and capacity.
Turning demand into a workable production plan
Knowing what customers want is only the beginning. The bakery needs to work out what must be produced and when to meet that demand.
Some requirements may already be covered by finished stock. The remainder must be considered alongside forecast demand and other manufacturing commitments. Before scheduling the work, planners need visibility of inventory availability, incoming materials and production timing and available capacity.
Abel’s planning and scheduling functionality displays manufacturing processes within work centres, enabling teams to view scheduled workloads against work centre capacity. Shortage management processes can also consider current stock, manufacturing jobs and purchase orders to identify raw-material shortages that could affect the plan.
This gives production and purchasing teams an opportunity to respond before a shortage disrupts the planned work, rather than discovering that an ingredient is unavailable when a batch is due to start.
In a bakery, that connection between materials and production matters. There is little value in scheduling a batch if the ingredients needed to make it are not available when they are required.
Staging ingredients for production
As production requirements become clear, preparation can begin.
Ingredients held in the warehouse must reach the production floor at the right time and in the correct quantities. Where batch tracking applies, the identity of each batch must also be maintained.
Abel supports staged-stock processes for moving bulk materials from the main store to a staging area in time for manufacturing. Unused materials can later be returned through the appropriate stock movement process.
Specific raw-material batches can also be allocated to manufacturing documents, linking the materials intended for production to the jobs that will consume them.
A staging process helps streamline inventory movements to support production. The required material can be identified, located and prepared for the work ahead.
Weighing and preparing ingredients
A commercial bakery may use the same ingredient across multiple manufacturing jobs. Preparing materials for each job separately can involve repeated handling. Abel’s multi-job weighing functionality can streamline materials handling by enabling an operator to work with that ingredient across multiple selected jobs.
The operator can weigh or dispense the required amount for each job while working through the same ingredient. Weights can be entered manually or captured using connected scales, with tolerance controls helping confirm the measured quantity before a label is printed.
For a bakery preparing several scheduled batches, this can reduce repeated handling of the same ingredient while keeping the weighed quantities associated with the relevant manufacturing jobs. The prepared ingredients can then be identified and held ready for the work ahead.
Ready for production
By the time production is ready to begin, substantial work has already taken place.
Customer demand has been translated into production requirements. Production has been scheduled with capacity and material requirements in view, while ingredients can be allocated, staged and weighed for the work ahead.
The day shift has a clearer picture of what needs to be made, when it needs to be made and whether the ingredients required for that work are ready.
Planning and preparation can help identify potential problems before they reach the bakery floor, giving teams an opportunity to address them before they disrupt scheduled production.
Looking ahead
With customer demand translated into a production plan and ingredients ready, the focus moves to the bakery floor. In Part 2, we examine what happens when planned production meets actual output, and why yield and waste need to remain visible throughout the process.
Learn more
Explore how Abel helps food and beverage manufacturers connect customer demand, planning, production, inventory and fulfilment.
