P10712: Wegmans’ Cheesecake Process...

Multi-Disciplinary Senior Design ConferenceKate Gleason College of Engineering

Rochester Institute of TechnologyRochester, New York 14623

Copyright © 2010 Rochester Institute of Technology

P10712: Wegmans’ Cheesecake Process Improvement

Andreana Crance Industrial & Systems Engineering Kevin Rodas Mechanical Engineering Rob Santora Industrial & Systems Engineering Jeremy Smith Mechanical Engineering Matt Syska Industrial & Systems Engineering

ABSTRACT The Wegmans bakery facility has seen substantial growth within the last decade. In particular, the bakery has a need to improve the current cheesecake making process. The process has remained the same since the demand was half of what it is today. Improving the current process will allow Wegmans to more efficiently meet customer demand, as well as meet increasing demand in the future. It will also allow other bakery departments access to the tunnel oven at an earlier time, allowing them to meet demand at an earlier time as well. The team analyzed the entire cheesecake process and selected to focus on the areas surrounding the tunnel oven. This area was analyzed with time studies, process flow maps and ergonomic analysis to provide Wegmans with the best solution. In the end, the process was improved by creating a water pouring unit to increase the efficiency and standardization of the cheesecakes going into the oven, and focusing on the depanning process at the finish of the tunnel oven. Various 5S and lean methodologies were applied as well.

Ultimately, the team implemented the Assisted Water Pouring Unit (AWP) to ensure consistency of the cheesecakes. The team also ran a set of kaizen events to improve the depanning process, which was the bottleneck of the parts of the process observed. Layout changes were also proposed to improve the product and people flow of the process. These changes enable Wegmans to better meet demand in a more efficient manner, while keeping the product standard and delicious.

NOMENCLATURE In order to prevent confusion, certain terms that appear in the paper are defined below: Pan: individual cheesecake pan (cheesecakes are

baked directly into them)

Sheet pan: holds 4 large or 8 small cheesecake pans throughout the baking process

Rack: moveable cart that holds 24 sheet pans total Batch: 1 mixing bowl of batter mixes 150 large and

350 small cheesecakes. Basket: Holds cheesecake after depanning before

final packaging AWP: Assisted water pouring unit ABS: Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene

INTRODUCTION The Wegmans’ bakery facility on Brooks Avenue is responsible for the production of the majority of baked goods available in all of Wegmans’ retail stores. Specifically, the cheesecake line has become a cause of concern for multiple reasons. In recent years, the demand for cheesecake has risen throughout Wegmans’ stores, and the current process cannot meet those demands in the most efficient manner. Since the process contains many physical components, there are aspects that may be ergonomically unsound. In addition, the cheesecake process is affected by variation since there has never been a standard procedure in place.

Wegmans would like for the cheesecake process to be analyzed and improved in terms of efficiency and throughput. Worker safety, cheesecake quality, and seasonal demand must all be considered when designing and implementing the new process. The current process can be broken down into six steps, which occur over the course of a few days. Those steps, in order as they occur, are as follows: Greasing, Crumbing, Pre-tunnel, Post-tunnel, Slicing, and Packaging.

The cheesecake process still relies heavily on manual labor while most of the other bakery lines are highly automated. In order to reduce physical stress on workers, the process will be evaluated to see if any mechanical components can be implemented. In

Proceedings of the KGCOE Multi-Disciplinary Engineering Design Conference


order to be successful, these components will have to work without negatively affecting any other performance metrics.

To help update the cheesecake line, the current layout was analyzed to determine its current state. In addition, 5S was implemented to help organize and standardize the process. A Kaizen event was also held to determine and eliminate sources of waste. Finally, rules must be set in place to ensure worker and management adopt and maintain any changes set forth.

DESIGN PROCESS During the design phase of the project, the team discussed initial customer needs with Wegmans. These needs included:

• Dumping water task made more efficient and safer.

• Reduce variability throughout entire cheesecake line.

• Minimize excess time spent on marble cheesecakes.

• Minimize labor at water pouring.

To ensure that the team would meet these needs, all project proposals and solutions were rated with the specifications listed in Table 1. In order for the project to be considered a success, Importance levels were marked with a 1, 3, or 9, with 9 indicating the highest importance. Ideal and marginal values were also specified, with marginal values being the minimum required for the specification.

Before any solutions could be considered, the entire process was observed. The current process takes place across both shifts, and sometimes takes more than a full working day to complete.

Figure 1: Value Stream Map

A value stream map (Figure 1) was created to ensure everyone in the team and the customers understood where a lot of the process problems occurred.

The goal of the concept generation was to locate the areas and parts of the process that were the most inefficient and labor intensive. The overall goal was to increase the efficiency of cheesecakes throughout the whole process. The team created a fishbone diagram (See Figure 2 below) to effectively organize the underlying causes of the inefficiencies throughout the process.

Figure 2: Brainstorming Fishbone The four causes the team focused on were machine, man power, environment and process. Figure 2 shows subcategories and causes that the team observed.

Using both the value stream map and fishbone diagram, the process was then analyzed from beginning to end, and relative weights were assigned to each criteria;

• Bottleneck/Efficiency: 25% • Labor Utilization Issues: 25% • Ergonomic/Safety Issues: 25% • Proper Equipment Usage: 10% • Scrap Issues: 15%

As a result of meetings with Wegmans, solution specifications were developed and the overall process observations, the team decided to focus their efforts on the pre-and post tunnel oven.

THEORY The main process used in this process improvement was that of lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing, with its roots in the Toyota Production System focuses on reducing 7 common forms of waste: Overproduction, Unnecessary Transportation,



Table 1: Engineering Specifications Metric No.

Metric Importance Units Marginal Value Target Value Proposal(s) to

Obtain Spec

1 Cheesecake per labor hour 9 # of Cheesecake = 45 = 50 1, 2, 3, 42 Risk of injuries 3 (benchmarking unit

using NIOSH, etc) = 25% reduction of benchmarking unit

= 75% reduction of benchmarking unit

2, 3, 4

3 People travel distance 1 % travel distance reduction

= 10% = 25% 1

4 Number of reworked 3 Percentage rework = 25% reduction of current rework rate

= 50% reduction of current rework rate

2, 3, 4

5 Throughput Rate 9 # of Cheesecake/hour = 475 Small Cakes/Hror

= 420 Large Cakes/Hr

= 560 Small Cakes/Hror

= 470 Large Cakes/Hr

3,4

6 Process improvement has full ROI for customer

9 Years = 1 Year = 0.5 Years 1, 2, 3, 4

7 Solutions meet Wegmans specific health code

standards

9 Y/N Y Y 1, 2, 3, 4

8 Cheesecake retains “homemade” feel

9 Y/N Y Y 1, 2, 3, 4

9 Process changes can meet holiday demand

9 Y/N Y Y 1, 2, 3, 4

Inventory, Motion, Defects, Over-processing, and Waiting. In addition to Lean manufacturing principles, many elements of 5S (Sort, Set In Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain) were integrated into the design to maximize the form and function and to ensure success of the improvements.

CURRENT STATE In order to improve the process, the current state had to be studied in detail to ensure familiarity and that sufficient data were collected. Data from different parts of the tunnel oven process were collected over a series of nights to create a value stream map (VSM) of the current process.

Figure 3: Value Stream Map of Cheesecake Tunnel Oven Process In addition to the VSM, a fishbone diagram was used

to map the overall “requirements” to the different categories of areas we could focus on.

Figure 4: Fishbone Diagram Mapping Overall Requirements to Focus Areas

SPECIFICATIONS Using the knowledge gained in analyzing the process, specifications were created that would allow us to measure the success of the project. In addition to the metrics, the metrics were ranked 9, 3, or 1 (9 being the highest) according to importance to the overall process. The cheesecake per labor hour was determined by dividing the average number of employees hours on the process by the number of cheesecake created in that time. Risk of injuries was determined by using the Wegmans in-house metric. The number reworked is determined by the number of cheesecake that need touchup work during the process (such as some of the cake sticking in the pan). Throughput rate is determined by the number of cheesecakes that can be created in one hours time. This is mainly constrained by the tunnel oven and will be discussed further later in the paper. It was



determined that the quicker the ROI was for Wegman’s, the better the project outcome would be. We set a rather aggressive target value of less than 0.5 years since we think many small improvements can make a very large overall impact. Metrics 7-9 are Yes/No targets to ensure nothing in the project hinder current practices. ERGONOMIC ANALYSIS One major concern throughout the improvement process was ergonomics; one of the main goals of the project was to improve the process without placing additional physical stress on the employees. Wegmans’ ergonomist, Paul Hickey, used standard Wegmans ergonomic analysis procedure to evaluate the cheesecake process. According to the Wegmans’ ergonomic scoring scale, a score of 24 or above is considered “high.” The cheesecake process did not receive any scores higher than a 6 (pouring chocolate into marble dropper), so it was decided that no further action was required to improve ergonomics at this point. In addition, none of the improvements recommended by the team significantly changed the physical actions of the employees, so overall physical stress would not increase. PROPOSALS From our analysis of collected data and brainstorming sessions with both team members and staff at the bakery, we narrowed our focus down to four main proposals. Detailed analysis and discussion of those four proposals follows.

PROPOSAL 1: MARBLE TABLE MOVE The first proposal involves the moving of the marble table. Marble cheesecake is done a few nights a week and requires extra processing compared to plain and chocolate cheesecake. The cheesecake pans are filled with plain batter, but not enough to make an entire cheesecake. The cheesecakes are then transferred to the adjacent room where melted chocolate is dropped into the pans. Once the melted chocolate is dropped into the pans, plastic rods are used to stir the melted chocolate into the cake. The stirring process creates a more “homemade” feel and makes each cheesecake unique. In our initial analysis, we noticed that this process was taking place a significant distance away from the rest of the pre-tunnel oven processes.

Figure 5: Marbling locations

As shown in Figure 5, the former marbling process was taking place in the blue area. Our team proposed moving the marbling process from the blue area, to the red area, which is directly across from the mixers. The red area was being used as a temporary storage area for dry goods used during tunnel oven operations during the day. These dry goods can be moved to unused space on the adjacent wall opposite the two mixers.

Figure 6: New Marbling Area Moving the marbling process to the red area reduced the distance that the cheesecake (and therefore workers) had to travel to and from the batter dropping to marbling operations. Additionally, the marble table move allows for all employees working on the cheesecake process to see the entire pre-tunnel oven process taking place. Before the table move, the marbling process was isolated on the opposite side of the wall. This created a disconnect between the employees working on marbling and those mixing and dropping. The table move allows for employees to help one another when one part of the pre-tunnel oven process slows down. During trial runs, employees realized benefits of the move by assisting in the marble process. The marble table move resulted in a 50% reduction in travel distance for all of the cheesecake and employees during the marbling process. This move requires a



small amount of extra labor at the beginning of the process (moving the table), but the team believes the gains from employees seeing the entire process far outweigh the need to take this extra step.

PROPOSAL 2: AWP-UNIT The second proposal was for an Assisted Water Pouring unit (AWP). The AWP would be used to eliminate the inconsistency of water amounts being poured into the sheet pans as the required water bath. This is accomplished through a simple pneumatic system that uses a time delay to allow water flow, calibrated at a certain flow rate, for a period of time. The result is a consistent water amount dispensed into each pan. Having a consistent amount of water ensures that there is the proper amount of water in the pan and the cheesecakes do not run the risk of drying out or over cooking. This has been a problem due to inconsistent operators who loads the trays in the oven and pours the water. This is not always the same employee and without proper training the amount of water is done “by eye” resulting in varying amounts from operator to operator and pan to pan. The secondary purpose of this unit is to eliminate the need to submerge a pitcher into a large reservoir of water for pouring. Ergonomic improvements include the elimination of the following: bending to scoop water from the bucket; wrist strain from lifting and pouring a pitcher filled with water (approximately 4 pounds); refilling and transporting 55 gallon buckets of water. A tertiary purpose, one that was not met in the final design, was to save time. The AWP was proposed to dispense water in a timely fashion, however pressure drop through the system slows the overall time for the dispensing. This problem can be solved with the addition of a water pump on the mobile cart, should this be problematic in the future.

Figure 7: AWP-Unit Box

The majority of the unit’s working parts are contained within a small box (shown in Figure 7) where the triggering mechanisms are contained within a custom handle (Figure 8) and connected through a length of hose.

Figure 8: Handle and Nozzle A nozzle (Figure 9) is used to direct the water at the pans and to allow the water to flow in a controlled manner without splashing or spilling. The nozzle and handle were custom designed and fabricated for this project. They were made from ABS plastic in the Brinkman Lab at RIT.

Figure 9: Nozzle The unit is mounted to a push cart with locking casters, making the unit mobile for storage or use in another area. A 22 foot hose connects the handle to the box, which can be wrapped and stored on the cart. This hose allows the cart to be placed in one location, giving the operator the freedom to move the handle across the length of the tunnel oven without repositioning the cart. Using operator feedback, improvements for ease of use and comfort were made to the handle. The improvements include removing one trigger in favor of a single trigger handle and making the grip area larger.



The AWP can keep up with the oven loading with approximately 30 seconds left between cycles. Recommended use of the AWP includes an operator’s only duty to be oven loading and water pouring. PROPOSAL 3: DEPANNING KAIZEN Proposal three revolves around the entire cheesecake depanning process. In order to increase the overall throughput of the tunnel oven process, the team must work at each bottleneck to ensure that the team was focusing on the correct process area. Through the data analysis, the team found that the cheesecake depanning process was a bottleneck.

Figure 10: Original Depanning Process The original depanning process took place near the end of the tunnel oven. This area is very cramped and it was apparent that the process could be improved in this area. Table 2: Depanning Production Requirements

Oven Release Rate

Takt Time w/ 1 Operator

Takt Time w/ 2 Operators

Small 4.3 sec 16.1 sec 8.0 sec Large 8.6 sec 14.2 sec 7.1 sec

As shown in Table 2, the oven release rate is much faster than the current process can handle. Most nights there were two operators on the process, but two employees are only fast enough to meet the requirements of the large cheesecakes. The current process would require almost four employees to keep up with the oven release rate. The first approach to this problem was to investigate other methods commercially available for depanning. Through extensive research, other commercially

available processes were either slower than the process that was originally used, or were fully automated solutions which required very large amounts of capital expenditures. The proposed solution to this depanning bottleneck problem was to have a depanning kaizen event. A kaizen event is a rapid improvement process that involves all the key stakeholders in the process. Using this method, the team was able to facilitate buy in from everyone from management to line level employees. The kaizen event promotes the long term success of any planned changes. The kaizen event was held over multiple evening to fit with the tight production schedule and availability of the workers. The depanning kaizen event had a few main objectives:

• Reduce total time it takes to depan cheesecakes for the possibility of increasing oven throughput rate

• Reduce repetitive motion. • Reduce queue in front of depanning to

reduce the scrap or rate of cheesecake stuck in pans

• Ensure large cheesecakes that are placed temporarily in the freezer are used in the correct order.

Through multiple iterations of the kaizen event, the best solution that the team came up with was to move the entire depanning process to another area of the bakery. There is a conveyor that runs from the end of the tunnel oven to this area of the bakery that is used for most goods baked in the tunnel oven, but was not being used for the cheesecake process. As shown in Figure 11, there is a conveyor “elbow” that is usually set aside during the cheesecake process to make room for the original depanning process.

Figure 11: Depanning Area With and Without Conveyor “Elbow” Keeping this elbow in place will allow the cheesecake to travel to the same area that most other products are depanned, as shown in Figure 12.



Figure 12: New Depanning Routing

Figure 13: New Depanning Area

Figure 14: New Depanning Layout The testing of the new cheesecake depanning area was a success. The takt time per small cheesecake was reduced to 9.0 seconds per operator from 16.1 seconds using the original method. While the new depanning method was a success in the trial runs, there are some barriers that currently prevent full implementation. The trial runs were done with a full labor force (no employees on break), and

with more workers present than usual. While only two people were actually doing the depanning, others were on hand to help. If a complete run of this method was used, the inconsistent number of employees assigned to the cheesecake area, as well as employee breaks, would hinder the overall success. In order to fully implement this new depanning method, management must be on board with the new process in order to facilitate its regular use. This includes ensuring employees are aware of what contingency plans are in place in the event of an anomaly. The time savings resulting from the process change in the cheesecake depanning was calculated to save Wegmans $15,400 per year. This is a substantial savings considering virtually no investment is necessary to make this happen. PROPOSAL 4: NEW SHEET PANS The fourth proposal dealt with the sheet pans. The current sheet pan size is 18” x 24” x ½” and is not utilizing the entire oven area effectively. The new design came with a few restrictions.

1. 158 inch oven width 2. 24 inch length 3. Sit on racks 4. hold enough water for water bath 5. Fit through washer

These restrictions drove the design of a sheet pan of size 12” x 24” x 1” (Figure 16) and another design of 16” x 24” x 1” (Figure 15). Both designs, fitting the restrictions given, and serving the need of speeding up the throughput of the oven. The first design is made to accommodate the small 5” pans, and the second design is made to accommodate the large 8” pans. The first design will increase the small cake production by 50%, and the second design will increase large cheesecake production by 12.5%.

Figure 15: New Sheet Pan Design



These sheet pans will be constructed of 5052-H32 Aluminum sheet metal. They will be folded into the proper shape, and will then have the seams welded so that they are water tight. They will receive a coating of glaze, and no other painting. There will be no reglazing required because there is no direct food contact to the sheet pans. Once the pans come in they are to undergo a series of tests. First they will be tested and rated based upon water holding; storage; stacking; cleaning; baking; and glazing. Once they pass all of these tests they will be ready for implementation. These pans should undergo these tests on a bi weekly basis to ensure that the pans are in good working condition. Also, these tests should be run any time that there is suspicion that failure may occur.

Figure 16: Sheet Pan with 8 Cheesecakes At the current depanning rate the 24” x 16” x 1” sheet pans are feasible to use for the large cheesecakes. If this were done, 100 of these sheet pans would need to be ordered costing approximately $4,878.00. This would in turn save the cheesecake process $3,888 annually.

RESULTS & DISCUSSION In order to evaluate whether the team succeeded in this project, the actual values as a result of the changes were calculated. These actual values were then compared to the original engineering specifications to measure success As Table 3 shows, almost all of the specifications either met its marginal value or met or exceeded the target value. The only value that did not meet the engineering specifications was that of the risk of injuries. Since the ergonomic analysis showed the entire process was very low risk, the changes in risk of injury was very minimal.

Table 3: Engineering Specifications Results

RECOMMENDATIONS A few other areas of the entire cheesecake process were shown to have a larger effect on the tunnel oven than originally anticipated. Consistency in greasing and crumbing is very crucial to the depanning process. If these steps are done incorrectly, the cheesecakes become difficult to extract from the pans. In order to fully realize many of the benefits from the work done in this project, greasing and crumbing should be investigated further to ensure uniformity. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are grateful to all of those who helped us with our project. Wegmans for sponsoring the project along with many of the Wegmans staff including: Scott Young, Chris Isaacson, Jamie Rothfuss, Paul Adams, Mike Least, and everyone else at Wegmans who helped us with the project. We would like to especially thank the Wegmans cheesecake production crew for working with us during the project. We would also like to thank John Kaemmerlen for being our faculty guide and for technical expertise. Also, a thanks to Phil Bryan for guiding us with scoping this project out prior to MSD.

Metric

Marginal Value Target Value Actual Value

Cheesecake per labor hour

≥ 45 ≥ 50 50

Risk of injuries ≥ 25% reduction of benchmarking

unit

≥ 75% reduction of

benchmarking unit

N/A

People travel distance

≥ 10% ≥ 25% 50%

Number of reworked

≥ 25% reduction of current rework

rate

≥ 50% reduction of current

rework rate

See Note

Throughput Rate ≥ 475 Small Cakes/Hr

or ≥ 420 Large

Cakes/Hr

≥ 560 Small Cakes/Hr

or ≥ 470 Large

Cakes/Hr

800 Small Cakes/Hr

Or 420 Large Cakes/Hr

Process

improvement has full ROI for

customer

≤ 1 Year ≤ 0.5 Years 4 Weeks for 1,2,3

Solutions meet Wegmans specific

health code standards

Y Y Y

Cheesecake retains “homemade” feel

Y Y Y

Process changes can meet holiday

demand

Y Y Y

P10712: Wegmans’ Cheesecake Process...

Documents

Transcript of P10712: Wegmans’ Cheesecake Process...