| Client: | Bakery Express |
| Industry: | Commercial Bakery |
| Location: | Florida |
The Client
A privately owned and operated company, Bakery Express USA has been in business for over 50 years, providing fresh and frozen custom cakes, donuts, pastries, pretzels, muffins, brownies and cookies to some of the largest retailers and grocery and convenience store operators in America.
With its HQ in Baltimore, MD and branches of the business in Orlando, FL and Dallas, TX, with another opening soon in Covington, KY, Bakery Express is a highly successful and ever expanding enterprise.
On one of our regular courtesy visits to Bakery Express Central Florida last year, the Schaumburg team was asked to help with a unique and highly specialized design and custom build that would aim to optimize the company’s work space and revolutionize its production output. Of course, we were only too happy to take up the challenge!
The Challenge
Bakery Express had been a customer of Schaumburg Specialties for a long time and we’d been building premium quality equipment that solved the business’ production challenges for many years. This, however, was a multi-faceted challenge like no other!
The racks we were tasked with designing and building were unique. We knew we had to make sure that they met the criteria necessary for easy nesting, as well as the specific requirements of Bakery Express’ automated conveyor system.
And of course, underpinning the design was ensuring that the oven racks were built to last and had the strength, stability and structural welding expertise that Schaumburg Specialties is famous for!
Luckily, our design engineers and metal fabricators are experts in rack physics and manufacturing. We worked closely with the team at Bakery Express and came up with some design drawings that were soon approved. Then, we built two prototypes and once the design features and structural dimensions were signed off, we got to work.
Our Solution Part 1: Racks Designed For Nesting
Our expert designers and fabricators came up with an ingeniously crafted, precision-engineered, tailor made solution for our client.
As space was at a premium at Bakery Express’s Orlando facility, we built 30 stainless steel double pan nesting racks that would nest easily together when not in use, thereby maximizing Bakery Express’ production capacity and saving precious space on the production floor.
Nesting racks
To enable the racks to slide into each other and nest easily, we only welded on one side of each shelf.
The racks were welded on one side
In addition, we built our usual reinforcement cross brace in a Z shape, to facilitate easy nesting and also to help ensure that the super strength and stability of the rack was maintained.
Z shaped cross brace
Finally, the oven lift on each rack was raised slightly to make nesting simple, while also ensuring that the racks were the perfect fit for the Revent A oven that Bakery Express was using in its facility.
The oven lift was raised slightly
Our Solution Part 2: Racks Designed For An Automated System
As well as needing to enable easy nesting, the pan racks also had to be specially adapted to fit into the company’s automated production line – and that meant there were several unique design features that had to be considered.
The first thing our expert engineers did was design the racks so that their feet, casters and wheels were inset (ie, set pointing inwards rather than outwards). This was to ensure that the racks were the perfect width to slide onto Bakery Express’ automated system and facilitate their smooth and efficient movement along the conveyor line.
The racks were built with inset feet
Fitting perfectly onto the automated conveyor system also meant there could be nothing protruding from the racks, so we used stem mounted casters, rather than plate mounted casters (which would have stick out) and made sure that the bolt heads were flush with the rack, so they could slide smoothly onto the automated system without any wobbles and bumps.
We used stem-mounted casters
The final ingenious design feature devised by our engineers was a tab, or flat plate, that we welded onto the top of each rack, so the automated production line would be able to recognise that there was a rack in location and could therefore dispense the necessary product onto it.
The tab aided rack recognition in the automated system
As soon as the racks were finished, we shipped them to Bakery Express in Florida, where they got to work straight away on its production line. The company was delighted with the difference they’ve made to optimizing its work space and boosting its production capacity and efficiency – so much so that they’ve already put in another order!
All in a day’s work for Schaumburg Specialties!
Bring Your Custom Build Ideas To Life With Schaumburg Specialties!
We delivered awesome results for this customer, and now we want to do the same for you. Our experts relish any production challenge and would love to make your custom build vision a reality.
To bring your design ideas to life and get started with your own custom build project, contact us today!