Baking&Snack - May 2013 - 85

EQUIPMENT
Distribution Systems

Ensuring
Accurate Deliveries
Paperless distribution systems play a key role in guaranteeing
bakeries send the right products to the right customers.
by Shane Whitaker

Through the years, bakeries have
consistently updated their operations to become more efficient.
They’ve also added lines to meet the
latest baked food trends. Sometimes
they physically expand their facilities to do this, but other times, they
don’t want to add more space, so
they look to build new lines in their
existing floor plans.
When bakeries increase production and packaging operations without expanding the plant, they often
encroach on storage or shipping
space. In turn, this means they have
less room for staging deliveries for
distribution. While bakeries have
invested in automating production,
one area they have often neglected
updating is distribution.
“Once you get beyond the packaging line or the stacker, the environment in many bakeries hasn’t
changed in the past 60 years,”
said Ralf Ulmer, executive vicepresident of sales, ToolBox Software
North America Inc., St. Paul, MN.
Most bakeries face three main
concerns in the order-fulfillment
and distribution areas, according to

www.bakingandsnack.com

Marc Braun, president, Pcdata, Inc.,
East Granby, CT. First, he said, no
real-time visibility of what’s going
on in shipping exists, which combines with a lot of individual decision making to create distribution
errors. Second, bakeries deal with
daily and seasonal variability. Third,
the loss of trays, baskets, racks and
other material handling equipment
(MHE) costs the industry millions
of dollars annually.
These represent some of the chief
issues with using paper-based distribution, but options exist for bakeries
to streamline shipping using paperless dispatching and warehousing
software and equipment to bring
this area into the 21st century.

Shipping software solutions
While distribution systems vary
dramatically, the majority still fill
orders as they did 50 or 60 years ago,
using paper pick sheets to show how
much of which product has been ordered by each customer, according
to Mr. Braun.
“The orders are crossed off or
adjusted based on the amounts ful-

filled, and the results entered back
into the system by hand at the end
of the day or the next day,” he said.
Because of improper decision
making in the warehouse, orders are
filled incorrectly and mis-shipments
occur. “Mistakes happen mainly
because it is too easy to make one,
such as misreading a product label
or reading a number on the next line
of a pick sheet and associating that
number with the wrong customer,”
Mr. Braun concluded.
Other major issues include unintended overproduction, undetected
misappropriations and an unknown
amount of “unaccounted-for” baked
foods. To alleviate these issues, bakeries can employ supply chain management solutions. These combine
software and hardware within the
shipping area and depots to ensure
that products are properly picked,
staged and loaded onto delivery
vehicles. Both Pcdata and ToolBox
have tailored their distribution
products to the baking industry.
For fresh bread distribution, Mr.
Braun said, bakeries have used technologies such as radio frequency

May 2013 / Baking & Snack / 85

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