Working efficiently in the dynamic bread- and pastry industry

The bakery industry landscape is facing a variety of challenges that often derive from the everchanging demand. Today’s consumers are becoming increasingly health-conscious and require bakery companies to adapt their products. In order to continuously supply the consumer, production needs to be both flexible and effective. As its high level of competitiveness characterizes the industry, these challenges cannot be ignored, as both retailers and suppliers are continuously looking for new innovative products.

Food safety & compliance

Food safety is a very delicate and important matter, even more with companies that produce biological products. With mandatory quality checks, wash-down procedures, product checks, formulation temperatures, and other control processes that are in place, companies aim to uphold their standard product quality. Quality control aspects like accurate track & tracing and the correct product specifications are required to avoid any penalties as a result of quality inspections.

Inventory management and planning

When a company does not have a well-integrated ERP system, the production planning and purchasing planning can get wrong insights into the real-time data of their stock inventory. Consequently, leading to the business missing out on bulk advantages or perhaps not having sufficient raw materials. But even when all the data is collected into one system, you also need the correct data insight to manage your inventory.

Production processes

Besides the inventory management and purchasing planning, the following step in the process, production, also requires real-time data together with track & trace information. This department needs to have real-time insights into the availability of labor and machines to compare this to the length of the production order. Optimizing this process can help bring the costs per product down to alter margins in a positive way.

(Re)using co- and by-products

To avoid the risk of food contamination and improve the overall manufacturing processes, companies need a clear plan related to reusing rework material for future batches. A strict health coding means that as a company, you are not allowed to work with different batches or lots in one and the order of the same product that would eventually become one end product batch. Instead, a rework batch needs to be included within the original production order (for example, as setup BOM).

Are you interested to tackle these challenges and bring your business to the next level? Don’t hesitate to get in contact!