When a 30yearold, u.s.d.a.certified bakery wanted to increase production and improve quality and process control, mettertoledo hispeed developed an innovative solution for the pacific northwest business.the commercial bakery business can be tough, so keeping production and quality control up is the only way to stay competitive. A bakery can stay in business only if its goods are of a consistently high quality, and if it can meet consumer demand with its products. One bakery in the pacific northwest has been producing highquality bagels for over 30 years. A track record of good taste and high quality has kept its doors open when other bakeries were forced to close. It is little wonder then that the company places such a high value on process control.challenge increase production and maintain qualitykeeping its quality up is a key success factor for the bakery. It can afford no compromise in this regard. When the need arose to increase production to meet consumer demand however, a close examination of production processes revealed some problems.the process the baker used to make bagels began when a slug former would portion then roll out the dough, forming it into slugs. Each slug would eventually become a bagel. But there were drawbacks to the system, causing inconsistency and waste.&ldquohandling raw dough can be a challenge,&rdquo said steve tullio, the mettlertoledo hispeed inside sales manager who managed the project. &ldquonot only transferring the slug between conveyors, but also ensuring nonconforming product can be completely rejected without leaving any residual product behind.&rdquoas it stood, too many slugs had to be rejected for nonconformity. A comparison of ingredients used to produce bagels showed that too few acceptable bagels were being formed per batch, and this directly affected the company&rsquos bottom line. If the bakery wanted to optimize and further increase its production to 80 bagels per minute while maintaining its high quality, changes needed to be made to reduce wastage.an innovative mettlertoledo solutiona coordinated effort between hispeed sales representative jake eggimann and the hispeed research and development team resulted in an innovative solution for the bakery a hispeed multilane checkweigher that would be integrated directly after the former discharge conveyor. The change would result in a positive &ldquowaterfall&rdquo transfer design the slugs would drop as they migrated between former, scale and discharge conveyors, to ensure the entire slug would be transferred completely. Each of four lanes would be equipped with a drop through rejecter to allow over or underweight dough slugs to drop onto a separate &ldquoreject&rdquo conveyor on which they would be taken away for reuse. &ldquoincreasing slug consistency by using feedback from the checkweigher can improve the overall product quality. It can also lead to few rejects, less waste and rework, which lowers overall production costs,&rdquo tullio explained.since the bakery was an existing facility, space was at a premium. The hispeed team optimized the overall system footprint to fit the existing space. The multilane checkweigher&rsquos open design, all stainless construction and a conveyor belt that could be removed or replaced without the need for tools allowed bakers to easily inspect, clean and maintain the unit &ndash an important feature helpful for maintaining u.s.d.a. Certification. &ldquothe customer appreciated our ability to adapt to their changing needs quickly and to create a checkweighing solution that fit their production methods and cleaning requirements,&rdquo tullio explained. &ldquowe continue to see more multilane checkweigher applications as customers need to increase production, improve quality and reduce waste, all within the confines of an existing facility.&rdquo about mettler toledomettler toledo is a leading global supplier of precision instruments and services. The company isthe world&rsquos largest manufacturer and marketer of weighing instruments for use in laboratory, industrial and food retailing applications. Mettler toledo also holds topthree market positions in several related analytical instruments and is a leading provider of automated chemistry systems used in drug and chemical compound discovery and development. In addition, the company is the world&rsquos largest manufacturer and marketer of metal detection and other endofline inspection systems used in production and packaging and holds a leading position in certain process analytics applications
