Fresh approach applied in the dispatch department of Fazerila bakery

Cimcorp Oy is delivering a large automation system to Fazer Bakeries Ltd's dispatch department early next year. The system employs Cimcorp’s MultiPick technology for order picking of full cases of bakery products. The delivery will also include system control, integration and commissioning.

Fazer Bakeries Ltd is a part of the Finnish Karl Fazer Group, which had net sales of FIM 4,761 million in 1998. Fazer Bakeries generated net sales of FIM 1,273 million and employed 2,320 people last year.

Fresh products for the Finnish palate

"The Fazerila bakery here handles most of Fazer Bakeries Ltd's baking in the Greater Helsinki area. We have bread and pastries departments as well as a traditional patisserie department. Some 500 people work at the bakery, 350 of whom are bakers. We produce about 21 million kilos of bakery products a year. Most of this - in fact, around 17,000 tonnes - is bread," reports production manager Martti Leino.

There are two big companies of about the same size in the Finnish baking industry. One of these is Fazer Bakeries Ltd, whose share of Finland's bakery products market is slightly over 30 %.

“The growth in volume that Fazer Bakeries has experienced over the last few years is largely due to increased sales of frozen bakery products,” Martti Leino continues. “There is still potential for growth in Finland's bakery products market because the country's per capita consumption of bakery products is much lower than in Germany, for instance. This is partly because people do a lot of home baking here in Finland. Fazer Bakeries' strengths in the Finnish market are the freshness of its bakery products thanks to its swift distribution network, as well as quality and awareness of the taste preferences of the Finnish palate," he emphasizes.

Speed and accuracy essential in the dispatch department

"In principle the bakery works three shifts a day, but the loading of different baking lines varies according to the day of the week and the time of day. The week starts on Sunday morning and ends in the early hours of the following Saturday. The last products of the week are delivered to shops on Saturdays. The intense pace of work in the dispatch department follows production so that delivery vans rush to shops in the Helsinki area 2 or 3 times a day, depending on the customer. Afternoon deliveries focus more on local bakery products."

"Fazerila's local bakery products are delivered to the Greater Helsinki area and Uusimaa province. Our product range also includes a few national brands that we make here for the whole country - for instance, Fazer's traditional berry pies and toasting breads," Martti Leino describes.

Between 50 and 60 vans make daily deliveries of local bakery products. During the course of a day the dispatch department sorts and delivers some 20-30,000 cases of bakery products. Slightly over two hundred different products are sorted and delivered every day.

Cimcorp's MultiPick solution unrivalled

The existing dispatch system based on conveyors is around ten years old and follows procedures that are standard in bakeries. Personnel lift both full and empty cases onto the conveyor. Some 15 employees are simultaneously working on the dispatch line at any given moment.

"Working at the conveyor is tedious and tiring. We’ve been thinking about a new approach to handling full cases for about four years. Cimcorp has been collaborating with us on this for about the same length of time. In fact there has been no serious rival to Cimcorp's MultiPick concept," stresses project manager Pekka Kääriäinen from Fazer Bakeries Ltd.

The decision to launch the dispatching department project with Cimcorp was taken about a year ago. The companies have a long history of collaboration because Fazerila acquired its first robots from Cimcorp back in 1987.

Kääriäinen states that many alternative layouts were considered during the course of the project.

"Cimcorp has conducted extensive system design for the dispatch department and the results have been verified by computer simulation. The project involves completely modernizing the dispatch department's control system at Fazerila. The handling of partially-filled cases will still be a manual process because the products in different cases are so dissimilar."

Simulation extremely useful

Pekka Kääriäinen emphasizes how useful computer simulation has been.

"Simulation is absolutely essential. It makes testing for the worst stumbling blocks easy. In these circumstances it would feel awful to embark blindly on building the system. Apart from being expensive to correct any mistakes once built, a delay of a few months would be the worst thing possible."

At the time of this interview, the end of October, the electrical work and mechanical installation of the MultiPick equipment were nearing completion in Cimcorp and test runs were due to start next. According to Kääriäinen, the aim is make the test runs correspond as accurately as possible to real conditions so that commissioning is seamless. Right from the design stage, the focus has been on making the startup of actual production smooth.
Final installation of the equipment is due to start in Vaarala in mid-January and the system is scheduled to be fully operational before Easter.

"The work done by Cimcorp's people has been as we expected - very efficient. Their years of experience with us have made them thoroughly familiar with our operations. That's made it very easy to work together," Pekka Kääriäinen states.


Juhani Lukka

Back