Page 20 - Baking Europe Journal - Winter 2022

TECHNOLOGY
20 AUTOMATION/AI

ARE YOU A

SMART COOKIE?

Smart manufacturing for baking

Written by:

Puneet Mishra Martijntje Vollebregt Martijn Noort
Wageningen Food & Biobased Research, Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands

he baking industry provides Efficiency of bakeries properties such as dimension, volume
consumers with a wide variety Modern bakeries are already and colour.
of high quality, freshly baked optimised by design, producing high
goods which make up an important quality baked goods relying on Technological solutions are currently
part of our daily diet. Their production generally efficient resource utilisation available that will improve
is optimised for cost, labour and of raw materials such as labour, streamlining and optimise
resource efficiency, however, it is no energy, or water, etc.). However, at productivity, energy use, waste
secret that the bakery industry faces the time of writing, the increased cost streams and product loss which will
enormous economic and societal of wheat and energy threatens the help to retain market sustainability
obstacles, such as the current wheat affordability of a loaf of bread. and competitiveness.
and Optimising the efficiency of a bakery
energy crises which pose tough plant is relatively straight-forward, As with other sectors of the food
challenges for an industry strongly relying on mechanisation and industry, the industrial baking is very
dependent on these crops, not to automation to increase productivity much affected by sudden changes in
mention an energy intensive baking whilst keeping manual labour and, consumer demand and societal
process itself. therefore, human error to a minimum. changes. For example, addressing
This streamlining process is usually sugar reduction is a very significant
In this article, experts at Wageningen achieved by improving the challenge for a bakery producing
University & Research (WUR) explore measurement and control of key sweet baked goods, an issue that
the opportunities that ‘smart process parameters that affect cannot always be resolved easily,
manufacturing’ offer by improving the product quality, in combination with whereas the product developer can
control and (resource) efficiency of both in-line and off-line measurement have access to digital tools to make
baking machinery. of important product quality improvements. The adoption of smart

BAKINGEUROPE Winter 2022/2023
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