06
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – INTERVIEW
The challenge is ‘lights out’ food production The industry narrative surrounding everything automation is a very interesting topic, especially in the current circumstances. Auto-Bake Serpentine defines the need for automation as follows: when the demand for computation, precision, repeatability, speed, and endurance exceeds our human sensibilities.
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Scott McCally, president, Auto-Bake Serpentine and Hinds-Bock Corporation at The Middleby Corporation, talked automation, recent challenges and navigating better ways of doing business.
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are better leveraging the full Middleby worldwide manufacturing capability and capacity to deliver parts, assemblies, and in some cases machines within the local region. + We have increased our stocking inventories on high volume and critical parts. + The increase in retail production depleted our customer’s production capacity and positioned our Auto-Bake On Demand equipment as the opportunistic solution to increase output immediately.
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Mihu: What challenges has 2020 brought to Auto-Bake? Please share an overview of how the challenges affected the way e the company works, incoming requests, and the supply chain overall. Scott McCally: In many ways, our service Scott McCally, president, Auto-Bake Mihu: What are the company’s plans for response became paralyzed. Auto-Bake Serpentine and Hinds-Bock Corporation this year and beyond? What will a ‘new has service resources in various regions at The Middleby Corporation normal’ mean for Auto-Bake and what across the world. Our customers rate us are the priorities around which it is being established? near the top of all OEMs year after year in overall service McCally: We continue to be customer-centric in our priorities. efficacy, yet we found ourselves lacking through COVID-19 2020 was challenging for our customers, we believe we have challenges: Logistics across the world became unpredictable, sluggish, learned how to execute better under such conditions. The new + and expensive. normal is that we are better equipped to serve our customers + Our high-volume parts inventories that are managed on a across the world quickly and effectively. Our digital service quarterly replenishment cycle became depleted. and support capabilities have expanded rapidly, by fire, of Demand for retail production skyrocketed, which created an course. Beyond our usual network, we now use XMReality, + immediate demand for more capacity from our producers. for example, a virtual reality type of software to help provide + Even with production demand high, our customers faced service, in addition to streaming video. These were initiatives extreme absenteeism among bakery production staff. that otherwise were two or three years away, now we have integrated them into the core of our service capabilities. Mihu: Based on these challenges, what are some of the key learnings acquired and how will they influence the way Mihu: How has the work at the Bakery Innovation Center business is conducted going forward? changed? What Auto-Bake equipment can be trialed there McCally: We have become more adept at remote service exeand how? cution; however, that is no substitute for having qualified perMcCally: Until COVID, the BIC hosted six-eight seminar sonnel on-site when and where necessary. We have increased events per year. That has changed and may not return in the the size and reach of our worldwide service team to ensure that same form of its previous identity. The world has found that we are much more capable and agile to handle COVID-19 type much can be accomplished virtually. As we continue to foster restrictions. We hired more people and trained the staff in new product development and equipment technologies to solve the Middleby worldwide offices. They already had service the most difficult market challenges, the BIC will be utilized team members, but they had not necessarily been trained on with on-site experts presenting to a virtual audience. We see Auto-Bake equipment specifically. Software, working remotely this as a very positive growth transition, allowing us to reach and better communication with customers also helped provide more participants with each event. them with the support they needed. As we reemerge out of We have a very flexible Auto-Bake line [at the BIC] equipped the COVID era, we are much closer to on-demand service with everything necessary to trial almost any product. This execution. Uptime is everything for our customers and we are remains critical to demonstrating how our technology is vertically focused throughout our organization on maximizing suitable for all bakery and food product categories, not only our customer’s production throughput and efficiency. cake, which we are so well known for. Au
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www.bakingbiscuit.com 02/2021
