How can you turn a small crafts business into a medium-sized company? The Polish pastry shop Staropolska answered this question – with comprehensive steps towards digitization and automation.
The result speaks for itself: As the production volume had quintupled since 2008, a new production plant had to be built in 2017. For more than one year, the 250 employees have worked at the new place of business in Bydgoscz. They produce approximately 20 tons of pastries, bakery products and ice cream in three shifts daily. The products are offered in the 40 subsidiaries of the company, but also in the shelves of the customers. “Many of our products here are handmade and this shall stay the same in future, too. That is why our products have an unique character,” says company owner Wojciech Kozlowski.
Staropolska uses state-of-the-art technologies to make this business model economically viable – and the CSB-System as business software plays a vital role. “Back then, we were looking for an industry-specific software to be able to control all processes, no matter whether in Management or on an operational level,” says Kozlowski.
This philosophy originates from the consequent optimization thought of a company, which has to struggle against high raw material prices like many other food producers: Any improvement potential is to be used to render the company more efficient, so that it can produce faster and more cost-effectively. Interfaces to a separate production planning system or even several different systems like Acces or Excel in parallel shall be avoided in order not to interrupt the information flow. Therefore, the CSB software is not only used to order raw materials from the suppliers, but also to manage customer orders, organize the inventory, check the quality and ensure traceability. In addition, the subsidiaries with cash registers are connected to the central system.
When combining the raw materials for production, the employees access the BOMs with their mobile devices and post the required materials directly to the respective production cost center by scanning their bar code
A better production planning offers many advantages
Despite all progress, the company does not at all intend to give up its individual production processes, but wants to support them with the help of the software in an optimal way. “We see ourselves as a digitized manufacture,” explains Wojciech Kozlowski. Production for example, basically takes place as before. Due to the short shelf life of the fresh products, exact and current data on orders, raw materials, ingredients, product calculations or quality information are increasingly important.
Through this close interconnection of physical processes with the world of data, the production planning has improved, too. Today, Staropolska is able to plan the use of raw materials, auxiliary supplies and operating materials in an optimal way, thus ensuring that the right raw materials are supplied with the right quality at the right time and at the right machines. In different levels of detailing, the employees plan the optimum sequence with the system. Thus, the orders in the sponge, cream or fruitcake sections can be produced with as few modifications as possible in a consistently high quality.
Therefore, the improvements in planning have a direct impact on the operational processes in the individual sections. “We could significantly reduce the stock on hand in the raw material inventory, optimize production and thus the effectiveness of our company.”
When the raw materials are weighed, the weight data of the scale are directly transferred to the system
The delivered raw materials are scanned at Receiving and posted to the inventory after their successful quality check
All semi-finished and finished products are weighed and labeled at the racks in order to be able to quickly identify them later and trace them if necessary
The shop floor is consistently digitized
The concrete advantages of digitization can be seen very clearly in the individual production sections. The CSB Racks are an essential element here. These IT workplaces for automated data capture are installed at important points such as dough production. If for example, a new production order is started, the recipes are transferred to the racks in Batch Processing and processed precisely. When the individual raw materials are weighed, the weight data of the scale are directly transferred to the system. Thus, processing errors previously resulting from the “manual” reading of the scales are practically excluded. This ensures a high reproducible product quality and minimizes losses due to wrong weighing. Subsequently, all semi-finished and finished products are weighed and labeled at the racks in order to be able to quickly identify them later and trace them if necessary.
The transition to digital data capture lead to considerable improvements in the inventory and picking, too. Today, mobile end devices are used where previously routing slips existed. The delivered raw materials are scanned at Receiving and posted to the inventory after their successful quality check. When combining the raw materials for production, the employees access the BOMs with their mobile devices and post the required materials directly to the respective production cost center by scanning their bar code. In picking, the employees are given the optimum picking and loading sequence on their MDE devices.
Digitization enables more than just fast success
Staropolska is a good example for how digitization starts on a small scale and entails more than just fast success as it keeps bringing the company further advantages. The fact that today, all data are captured and processed digitally, is not only more efficient, but enables Wojciech Kozlowski to make evaluations that are more precise. Therefore, the investments were worth it and are a blueprint for the future according to the managing director. “We intend to build a new bakery as the current one has become too small in the meantime. In the new plant we will refer to the CSB software, too.”
