Baking & Snack - April 2019 - 104

MAXIMIZING EFFICIENCY

can imagine, there are hundreds of performance indicators out there, and all the acronyms can be impossible
to remember," observed Rowdy Brixey, president, BEST:
Brixey Engineering Strategies & Training.
Most plants rely on operating equipment effectiveness
(OEE), which measures how well a piece of equipment
or system works compared to its full potential. However,
Mr. Brixey has a few favorites.
One acronym, LBPM-D, stands for "pounds per manhour for direct labor." To determine this KPI, one can
total the gross production pounds for products made on
a line by week, month or another period. Next, divide
this number by the total payroll hours for the direct labor responsible for manufacturing those items during
the same timeframe. "This KPI will show whether you
have extra personnel on the line compared to its historical run rate," Mr. Brixey explained. "This format can also
be used for measuring total plant or any indirect labor.
Trending these numbers can really uncover opportunities for reducing overhead and increasing margin."
Another acronym is YOY CPLB. After calculating
"year-over-year cost per pound" for a specific time period, one can adjust for inflation, raises, utilities and
other variables the operations team typically can't control. Then one can compare the year-over-year numbers
based on waste, scaling, downtime, overtime and other
controllable factors. "Look at 'cost per pound' versus
'cost per unit' because it eliminates factors like loaf size
and bake times," Mr. Brixey advised.

Long and short of it
Such analysis of key data allows bakeries to take a proactive approach in refining their operations. On the
production floor, however, line efficiency can quietly
creep beneath acceptable thresholds set by the bakery.
Crunching such KPIs in real time provides line workers

with the tools to take immediate corrective action, even
if it's a band-aid solution, according Bob White, president of Focus Works.
"The best [system] is having alerts when numbers
reach warning levels such as 85% efficiency," Mr. White
said. "You have to realize that you start at 100% efficiency, and as the day wears on, it can only decrease because
there's no making up for lost time and material."
From an automation standpoint, real-time dashboards give production supervisors and managers the
visual tools to continuously monitor their KPIs and
where they are trending, noted Matt Lueger, vice-president of sales, NorthWind Technical Services. "They
tend to want their data instantaneously, in a snapshot,
through their smartphone or tablet," he said. "Though
[KPIs] may differ slightly from customer to customer,
the big ones that people ask for are production totals, estimated scrap, total yield and energy usage."
However, bakers need to analyze all information with
a proper perspective. "Depending on when they look at
it, those same 'real time' dashboards can be misinterpreted at first," Mr. Lueger pointed out. "Benchmarks are
typically derived over a long time period, so comparing
real-time data to benchmarks can sometimes be scary.
If your data window isn't wide enough, say during a line
startup when scrap is higher, the numbers can be pretty misleading."
That's why Orlando Baking picks 85% as its realistic performance production efficiency goal, whether
it's measured in pounds of product or cases packed. "If
it's 85% or higher, employees will write that number in
green," Mr. Stiffler said. "If it's 84% or lower, they write
it in red."
To accurately monitor waste, for instance, Orlando
Baking tracks it not only per hour but also per shift.
"Let's say our goal is 50 lb or less waste per hour or up

Nothing fake about AI's potential
When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), the smart money is
betting that the industry might be
closer than many people realize,
noted Matt Lueger, vice-president of
sales, NorthWind Technical Services.
He said that Rockwell Automation
recently purchased Emulate3D,
an engineering software firm that
allows manufacturers to virtually
simulate equipment and systems to
ensure throughput, machine performance and control testing. "Though

104 Baking & Snack April 2019 / www.bakingandsnack.com

artificial intelligence is not widely
used yet in the industry, machine
builders are already starting to incorporate these types of simulations
for virtual reality demos and training
applications," Mr. Lueger said.
Rowdy Brixey, president, BEST:
Brixey Engineering Strategies &
Training, observed that successful
AI depends on accumulating accurate data points to drive decisionmaking. "Providing the proper data
is available, then you must decide

what you'll do with the decision the
data tells you to make," he explained. "A good system integrator
will normally be needed to update
existing equipment."
At the International Baking
Industry Exposition, to be held
Sept. 7-11 in Las Vegas, Mr. Brixey
recommended that bakers ask suppliers how AI is used in their latest
systems displayed at the show. That
will provide new insights that many
bakers likely hadn't seen before.

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