So, why do so many companies choose to invest in Stevens for their Recipe Formulation & Traceability needs? Gloucester-based bakery Janes Pantry has recently installed a 2 terminal Recipe Formulation System from Dataprocess Stevens in Blackburn. The ‘off the shelf’ bakery system is designed to provide effortless recipe traceability whilst ensuring a high degree of product consistency and the virtual elimination of scrap batches caused by formulation errors.
Well renowned by the Bakers Federation, Janes Pantry is a business which has many shops around the Gloucester area and has a fleet of 9 vans to deliver their delicious pastries to a well established and loyal customer base.
Neville Morse, Managing Director is delighted by the purchase of the system: “We were told by Stevens about the impressive payback from raw ingredient reduction and at first we were sceptical. We’ve calculated that by installing this system into our bakery we’ve saved around 5% of our annual raw ingredient cost and at the same time have virtually eliminated bad batches caused by operator error. I always knew that Operators tend to overscale, but I had no idea that enforcing weighing tolerances would produce such an improvement to our bottom line profitability”.
So, the lead question is ‘Are Janes Pantry unique in their raw ingredient savings?’ – well, the answer quite simply is no! Since Stevens invented the Recipe Formulation System as part of a nationwide initiative by British Bakeries in the 1980’s, over 1000 customers worldwide have benefited from their installations.
Steven’s client portfolio now consists of hundreds of single site businesses around the UK and they take pride in giving a premium, but affordable service to local businesses. Whilst taking care of single site businesses like Janes Pantry, Stevens have a multinational Major Account structure in place to support the world’s largest baking companies like Sara Lee, Grupo Bimbo, and George Weston Bakeries (Allied Bakeries affiliated), who have a presence across many countries.
Are Stevens becoming too big to react to the needs of smaller bakeries? Absolutely not – the philosophy at Stevens is very much customer orientated and not volume production orientated. Each company has its own needs and although the system is available ‘off the shelf’, the software team at Blackburn is kept very busy adapting the Vantage software to be tailored to the needs of companies who require that ‘little extra’ functionality to enable the Vantage to mirror their process.
The newly installed Vantage system provides Recipe Control by enabling the Production Manager to schedule the daily requirements for the recipe batches on the PC in advance. The batch requirements are then displayed on the Vantage Touch Screen display to enable the Operators to select from the list of requirements without the use of a paper production schedule.
Once selected, the recipe is pulled from the main database and the operator is prompted through the recipe formulation process one ingredient at a time, ensuring that the weighing tolerances are met and no over or under weighing occurrences can spoil a batch, which can be a costly mistake.
At the same time as enforcing a strict weighing tolerance, the Lot Numbers of each of the raw ingredients are recorded on the system to once again remove paperwork associated with stock traceability and provide a comprehensive audit trail should the need to recall a product or investigate a specific contaminated ingredient take place.
All the Recipe Data is stored centrally on a management PC which can easily be integrated with the Stevens Stock System, which is being implemented by Janes Pantry in January 2009, to enable FEFO (First Expired, First Out) to be practised and enforced at the weighing terminals.
UK Sales Manager Toby Hawkins comments: “We were delighted to find out that the installation of the system at Janes Pantry had provided such a strong return on investment. Any company would find it difficult to turn down a saving of 5% on the ingredient spending. This is now becoming a familiar story to our sales team and it’s motivating to us all to know that in addition to providing shop floor traceability in line with the latest food legislation, the system provides such a healthy return on investment to our customer base.”
Stevens now offer modules to compliment their Recipe Formulation System to provide factory wide traceability to their customers. These additional modules include Goods Receiving, Mixer Collation (for combining the traceability of bulk fed ingredients with the pre-weighed ingredients), Average Weight & SPC, In-Line Checkweighers and also their new Finished Product Dispatch System, proving to be a top seller in the USA.
For further information, contact Stevens on +44 (0)1254 685200 or visit them online at www.stevensgroupltd.com
Comments are closed.