Bimbo Bakeries USA senior staff share strategies to help bakeries run smoothly

USA – The lack of skilled maintenance workers in the baking industry has required baking companies to level up the way they approach both maintenance programs and recruiting and retaining their maintenance employees.

During the American Society of Baking’s BakingTech conference, Luis Vargas, vice president of engineering, and Carlos Quiroz, senior reliability manager, both of Bimbo Bakeries USA, spoke about strategies that can help baking companies address these issues.

Quiroz urged the baking industry to move away from a reactive maintenance strategy to a prescriptive strategy, which he defined as one that uses machine learning to adjust operating conditions for desired outcomes as well as intelligently schedule and plan asset maintenance.

A prescriptive maintenance strategy requires three steps. The first is to schedule major and minor overhauls to replace wear components such as relays, wear strips, pneumatic cylinders and more.

He stressed the importance of detailed job plans for maintenance tasks so that even the lowest skilled worker can execute them successfully.

The second step is to condition monitoring for keeping track of critical machine parameters and large high-cost components.

Condition monitoring can be online or route-based, and some parameters that could be telling are vibration, temperature, pressures and amperage. This monitoring allows teams to check critical assets between scheduled overhauls.

The third step is to use contextualized data from a CMMS (computer maintenance management system) to predict a problem or failure and diagnose or prescribe a possible solution.

Business intelligence systems and software can help bakers create interactive dashboards with this data and help bakers monitor the bakeries and specific lines.

Vargas shared strategies for recruiting and retaining skilled maintenance workers. He encouraged bakers to evaluate if their current wages for entry-level and skilled maintenance mechanics and technicians are competitive with other companies and industries.

He also spoke about the benefits of skills-based compensation. By growing compensation based on skills acquired, bakers can increase retention and decrease turnover.

Vargas also noted that apprenticeship programs are an effective way to enroll associates and develop them into the mechanics a bakery needs. Apprenticeship programs require procedures and defined skills so that those enrolled can see a clear path to a successful career.

No effective maintenance program is complete without a conversation about spare parts. Vargas stressed the need for a disciplined approach to spare parts inventory for effective asset management.

He mentioned that maintenance departments should not have spare parts gathering dust on the shelf and should evaluate whether they have obsolete or duplicate parts. Knowing what parts are stored and where they are is critical.

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