Baking & Snack - December 2018 - 32

NEW HORIZONS BAKING CO.

Before muffins are packaged, two employees provide a final quality inspection
based on visual cues located throughout the production and packaging areas.
System, which checks specs including height, diameter,
symmetry and color. Once they pass the vision inspection, it's on to the LeMatic forker, where the conveyor
runs through at about 200 ft per minute. Muffins spin
four times while the forker perforates the product, and
on to packaging they go.

New world packaging

Mixing up diversity in the baking industry
Back in 2009, Ohio's unemployment rate was at an all-time high.
In Huron County, home of New Horizons' Norwalk headquarters,
it had skyrocketed to 18%. But, even in such dismal times, the
bakery's strong sales told a different story, and it was growing.
Filling a gap in its workforce wasn't even on the radar.
But today, the company looks to the future with a reimagined
strategic alignment and a focus on an all-new and diverse generation of employment. "This is a real business challenge that
all bakers - all business owners - face right now," said Trina
Bediako, president and COO, New Horizons Baking Co.
The family-owned bakery, which is in its second generation of
leadership, is currently developing recruitment strategies and
onboarding programs that will include a training coordinator
who can manage specific New Horizons processes on each line.
"We want to put together a training team at each level - whether it's supervisors or plant personnel - to give them the time
and attention they need," Ms. Bediako said.
As a minority-owned business and one of the country's largest
MBE-certified food manufacturing companies, New Horizons
takes pride in the diversity of its workforce. "We have strong
leaders across the board, but I'm proud of the female leadership we have as well," Ms. Bediako said, calling attention to the
women who serve as director of purchasing, controller and superintendent as well as a number of female production managers. "The skillsets they've brought to our company have added
to a male-dominated industry, and that is a nice mix."

32 Baking & Snack December 2018 / www.bakingandsnack.com

Changes in New Horizons' business naturally led to changes on the line because co-manufacturing and high SKUs
call for an entirely different packaging culture from that
of fewer SKUs and similar product types. At the end of the
line, there's an inverse relationship between flexibility and
automation, so, the company's strategic realignment called
for optimization in packaging, as well. It meant moving
away from flexibility and toward efficiency.
When all English muffins head toward the packaging area, two workers provide a final once-over to ensure
the muffins are up to spec based on visual cues posted
throughout the production area. From there, the products
enter a LeMatic bulk packaging machine that vacuum-seal
them 36 at a time.
But before they enter, plastic sponge hold-down cups
line up the muffins to uniformly feed them. "The old
style was hold-down feet, but LeMatic came up with this
style, which is much more efficient," Mr. Harrison said.
And in the name of efficiency for the customer,
bulk bags are sealed not only on the sides but also in
the center, blocking them off a dozen at a time. "That
way, when the restaurant opens it, they only open
12 muffins at a time instead of exposing all 36," Mr.
Harrison explained.
Once sealed, the 36-packs run through a Fortress
Technology metal detector and are stacked into trays
two at a time.
Here, New Horizons has recognized even more opportunities to streamline the process through automation.
Soon, the operation will no longer run all lines into a common conveyor in favor of four separate units that will load
the trays, stack them and run them to the palletizing area.
"With feeding all the lines to one pack/stack, the problem
was that we were running too fast," Mr. Harrison said. "The
timing just became too critical."
The bakery is also in the process of manufacturing a fully
automated palletizing module for muffin production that
will be a mirror image of the bun palletizer. This will happen once it completes the shift to 100% bulk packaging (it
currently packages a portion of English muffins in bags until the three additional bulk lines are installed).
Next, the pallets are shrink-wrapped in a way that

http://www.bakingandsnack.com

Baking & Snack - December 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Baking & Snack - December 2018