| Client: | Hillshire Brands |
| Industry: | Food Production |
| Services: | Packaged Meat and Frozen Bakery Products |
| Location: | Nationwide |
The Client
Hillshire Brands (also known as HSH) made its trading debut on June 29, 2012, after its predecessor, the former Sara Lee Corporation, spun off its international coffee and tea division and renamed the remaining units of the company Hillshire Brands.
Hillshire manufactures and markets packaged meat and frozen bakery products for the retail and foodservice markets and its portfolio includes several famous brands including Jimmy Dean, Ball Park, Hillshire Farm, State Fair, Sara Lee frozen bakery and Chef Pierre pies, as well as artisanal brands Aidells, Gallo Salame and Golden Island Jerky.
In 2014, the company merged with another of our valued clients, Tyson Foods, creating one of the largest, most successful multi-national food companies in the world!
Naturally, when such a prestigious customer asked for our help to custom build racks that would work with its automated systems to minimize downtime and ramp up production efficiency at its automated plant, we were only too happy to assist.
The Challenge
Hillshire Brands was running a huge automated plant that churned out thousands of different varieties of bakery products a day.
There was always a risk that parts of these automated systems would experience technical difficulties or break down, meaning sheet pans full of ready-to-bake or indeed baked bread products would back up on the line, making it necessary to stop the production process in its tracks while the system’s fault was fixed. This could lead to long periods of downtime and operational disruption, massive problems with production efficiency, not to mention huge amounts of spoiled and/or wasted product.
To try and prevent such efficiency problems in the event of any technical difficulties, we were asked to come up with a custom build solution.
If a part of our client’s automated system broke down, its employees would need to quickly manually move the affected sheet pans onto racks and take them to another part of the line that was working well, or to another line altogether. This would help to keep production going and prevent any product being wasted.
However, the sheer scale of our client’s operations and the huge variety of different baked goods on offer (burger buns, loaves, ciabatta, croissants & pastries, bagels, baguettes – to name just a few!) meant we needed to build racks that could accommodate several different types of product at any one time.
With such racks in place, whichever product was being manufactured by the part of the automated system experiencing problems, our sheet pan racks would be able to accommodate the sheet pans for that product.
Our racks needed to accommodate several different types of pan
This was tricky because of the huge variety of different shaped pans that would need to sit comfortably on the rack without falling down between the wires on the shelves. It was going to take an intricate, precision-engineered design and build to remedy this production challenge. Luckily, our extremely talented team was more than a match for the task!
Our Solution
Our expert designers and welders came up with the perfect tailor made offload racks for our client. We built 50 racks that were each 6ft high, 5ft wide and 28in deep, with 16 levels accommodating 32 pans in all.
During the design of the racks, our team tried several different types of sheet pan on the wire shelves, so they could ensure that the grid sections were proportioned perfectly to accommodate all of Hillshire’s varieties of product.
We tried several different types of pan on the shelves
The build of the perfectly designed wire shelves was intricate and complicated and our welders had to build the rack from the bottom up, ensuring that the wire grid pattern was exactly the same on each level. At Schaumburg Specialties, we’re lucky to have some of Chicago’s best welders on our team, so such an undertaking was not a problem.
The racks were welded from the ground up
Hillshire also requested top covers be added to the racks, to prevent any contamination of food products when they were being moved around its facility. So we added a cover to each rack and also gave each rack a glass bead finish, which would make it very easy to keep clean and sanitized.
The finished offload racks
Once the racks were ready, we shipped them immediately to Hillshire’s facility, where they got to work immediately on the company’s production line.
The racks ready to be shipped
We soon had feedback from our client that they were delighted with how our custom build racks slotted so perfectly into its production line and how well they worked to boost its plant’s production efficiency.
And the racks are still in operation to this day, working in partnership with Hillshire/Tyson Foods’s automated systems to ensure production is firing on all cylinders!
Bring Your Custom Build Ideas To Life With Schaumburg Specialties!
We delivered awesome results for this customer and we want to do the same for you! Our design engineers and metal fabricators can custom build equipment that solves any and every production challenge and can adapt to any and all requirements!
To make your custom build vision a reality, contact us today!