I worked as an operator at a bakery, so in a food processing factory. My responsibility was the bread roll (Brötchen) line, from making the dough to the actual forming of the rolls up to the baking in the oven. So really making the rolls from beginning to end. The process is half automated, not fully automated, because there are a lot of manual interventions. My job was to intervene when I would see a deviation from our standard quality, always based on my training and knowledge.
For example, I would go to our terminal where I can see all the motors represented and I would increase or decrease the speed of the motors. Or I would change the timing of the dough.
Dough is a living product because of the workings of the yeast. Every dough is different and that’s why it’s necessary to intervene. If the dough is a little warmer or softer it reacts differently and I have to adjust all the parameters. Parameters when making the dough is mostly the temperature of for example the added water we use. For forming the rolls it is the speed of the motors of the conveyor belts and rollers which impacts on the thickness of the dough.
The roll should always have the same weight. If the dough is more solid, the parameters need to be adjusted. At the oven, steam addition is adjusted because the steam keeps the bread roll surface moist and elastic. The bread then doesn’t break open so easily. If it’s dryer, the water inside the bread will try to escape and then the bread bursts open. Depending on what you are trying to achieve in a particular product, you may or may not want that.
Most of my decisions are made by sight or touch. I feel the dough to see how it reacts. We are operators but we not only need process knowledge but also product knowledge.
Normally, the job is designed for two or three people. One makes the dough, one is responsible for forming and one for baking. Sometimes I had to work the entire line on my own. I worked on my own or in teams.
There is a lot of potential when it comes to automation. We are a reasonably large company but we only supply our own shops. A company like ‘Harry’ is much more automated. For example, we have to push the carts which carry the trays with the rolls on by hand into the oven. In a more automated processes, these are moved on a conveyor. This means that instead of two or three people operating the process, this could be done by one.
We don’t have a control room. Instead, we stand by the process and walk around the process. We walk and up on our feet for eight hours nonstop. In one dough container there are 300kg of dough. The containers of course are well mounted, but it still is a physically demanding job and automation can help to ease the task.
I don’t think our process could be fully automated because the dough has too much variability and too many interventions which we can’t control. For example, the flour consistency depends on the temperature the wheat grew in during the year. You will always need someone to see and feel the dough and bread.
I trained as a food technology specialist (Fachkraft für Lebensmitteltechnik) for three years but I always knew that I wanted to study further.
I love about my job that I have control over product quality. When I go to the shops, I see my products which I know people enjoy. I bring breakfast to people’s lives. I also love the technical aspects of my job.
What I don’t like is working in shifts. It’s a normal three-shift company with the process running continuously. We start on Sunday night and run through to Saturday evening. In the future, I would like to work in a managerial technical position or in process optimization. I want to automate and improve the process. I not only want to increase profit but also make the lives of the operators better. It’s not only about increasing the number of rolls per hour from 12,000 to 12,500 but do consider the implications for the people who run the process. For example, increasing throughput means that the operators must walk faster during inspection and it becomes more stressful. Because finding operators is easy but finding good operators, who will stay, is difficult. We need more creature comforts for operators. It could start with an easy chair but could also be more recognition and better, more human centered automation.