This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
This Website Uses Cookies
By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Learn More
This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
Snack and Bakery logo
search
cart
facebook twitter linkedin youtube
  • Sign In
  • Create Account
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
Snack and Bakery logo
  • Home
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Digital Edition
    • eNewsletter
    • Subscribe
    • State of the Industry: Bakery
    • State of the Industry: Snacks
    • State of the Industry: Foodservice
    • Tortilla Trends
    • Bakery of the Year
    • Snack Producer of the Year
    • Top 50 Snack & Bakery Companies
    • Case Studies & Advertorials
  • Snack Products
    • New Products
    • Chips
    • Crackers
    • Frozen Snacks/Appetizers
    • Nuts & Trail Mixes
    • Popcorn
    • Pretzels
    • Puffs/Extruded Snacks
    • Tortilla Chips
    • Other Snacks
  • Bakery Products
    • New Products
    • Bars
    • Breads
    • Breakfast Products
    • Cookies
    • Desserts
    • Pizza
    • Muffins
    • Snack Cakes
    • Sweet Goods
    • Tortillas
  • Ingredients
    • New Ingredients
    • Chocolate
    • Dairy
    • Extruded
    • Flavors & Colors
    • Fruit
    • Functional
    • Grains
    • Inclusions
    • Nutritional
    • Nuts & Seeds
    • Sweeteners
  • Equipment
    • New Equipment
      • New Technology
    • Belts & Conveyors
    • Control Systems
    • Depositors, Dividers & Rounders
    • Extruders
    • Fryers
    • Inspection & Detection
    • Laminators & Sheeters
    • Mixers
    • Ovens & Proofers
    • Packaging
    • Slicing, Cutting & Portioning
  • Trends
    • Artisan Baking
    • Better-For-You
    • Cannabis Edibles
    • Clean Label
    • Flavor Trends
    • Food Safety
    • Gluten-free
    • Plant Efficiency
    • Portion Control
    • Sustainability
  • More
    • Blogs
    • Classifieds
    • Events
      • IBIE 2019
      • Sanitary Design Workshop
    • Interactive Product Spotlights
    • SFWB Store
    • Slideshows
    • Sponsor Insights
    • Submit New Products
    • Videos
    • Webinars
  • Buyer's Guide
    • Construction, Sanitation & Maintenance
    • Ingredients
    • Instrumentation, Computers & Controls
    • Packaging Materials & Containers
    • Processing & Packaging Equipment
    • Services, Supplies & Merchandising
    • Shipping & Delivery
    • Vending & Dispensing
    • Get Listed!
    • Take a Tour
  • Contact
  • Advertise
Home » No Pouch, No Tools, No Service

No Pouch, No Tools, No Service

March 1, 2008
Reprints
No Comments

No Pouch, No Tools, No Service

By Jeff Dearduff
J.Dearduff@comcast.net

Check out this scenario: Your house is on fire, and you’ve called 911. The fire trucks are blaring their sirens as they come sliding around the corner, pull up to your house and survey the problem. It’s then that everyone realizes they left their hoses on the drying rack back at the firehouse. The firefighters hop back onto the truck and drive to the station to retrieve the hoses, only to be redirected to the next fire and forget about yours.
House lost.
How about this one: Your favorite team is in the World Series, and you’ve sweated it out all year as they struggled to make it through the playoffs. It’s now game seven, bottom of the ninth, two outs, man on second, down by one run. The No. 1 homerun hitter in the league is up. When it’s his time at the plate, he shows up without his bat, steps into the box and takes three pitches down the middle. Game lost.
Finally, you just left a weekly management meeting. You’re walking though the plant with your hands full of notepads and reports when you see some operators struggling with a broken bread bagger. You hear the maintenance call over the PA. Three to four minutes later, your mechanic shows up, and all he has is a dirty shop towel hanging out of his pocket. He surveys the situation and heads back to the shop for something to fix the problem with. No pouch, no tools and, thus, no service. Product lost.
The point is that when there is a job to do, it usually requires some kind of tool to fully accomplish the task in a timely manner.
I was having dinner with my dad a couple weeks ago. He has been in the baking industry and the maintenance end of it for more than 40 years. Dad still works in and around bakeries, rather than spending his retirement holding a fishing pole or golf club every day. He asked me a stirring question that night and one that hit home real hard: “Why don’t bakery mechanics these days carry tools to the maintenance call?” Surely, he is not referring to all bakery maintenance mechanics, but you know as well as I do what I’m talking about here.
Back in the day when my father was a tool-toting bakery mechanic, and even when I got started, your tool pouch was like your favorite pillow. You took it everywhere, and you kept it stocked with the essentials that could get an oven back on line or help you give CPR to a bread bagger. Nobody messed with your tool pouch ... well, not seriously, anyway. There was the occasional “nail the belt to the bench, and then make an emergency call and watch your buddy get hung up” thing. That is always good for a laugh.
Dad even tells me that guys back in the 60’s and 70’s would weigh their pouches to see how much stuff one guy had over the next. There was true pride in being a bakery maintenance mechanic and for your ability to solve a problem and screw things back together faster than the next guy. Is that same level of pride really evident throughout the industry today? Not likely.
It’s time we take a close look at this trend and decide if we want to do something about it. When you observe the daily routine of bakery mechanics in a well-run plant, they can spend most of their time doing very mundane tasks in between sessions of bench-top talk. In the more challenged bakery, they can be on the run quite a bit, solving issue after issue. Either scenario requires that the technician have a wide variety of tools and know how to use them. This is one of the reasons we pay them more than the others in the bakery, right?
You’d think that every mechanic would have a required tool list, and you’d assume that they know to have their tools with them when they go out to answer a call. Maybe it is this assumption that needs attention. Maybe you need to have some rules about their responsibility to carry tools and enforce those rules. If a mechanic comes out to a maintenance call without his tools, maybe he needs to go home for the rest of the day and rethink his dedication to the craft. This is not a difficult problem to solve, but it is one that needs to be solved, and one that only you can solve.
Again, I say, there are those dedicated individuals who still have pride and always carry the pouch with a full complement of weapons, but there seem to be too many mechanics who walk onto the floor empty-handed. The latter are the ones we need to work on. Their responsibilities to the craft need to be reassessed. The ones who do carry tools should be recognized for their professionalism.
We have always talked about “putting out fires” in bakeries, but it’s time we relate to the reality of it all. If you come to a fire without hoses, somebody will get burned. SF&WB

subscribe to sfwb

Related Articles

Triangle/JDD rotary pouch machine for automated pouch filling and sealing

Providing Knowledge Tools for Success

Siemens announces special offer for machine tools users with SINUMERIK CNC onboard

New tools for productivity from Heat and Control at SNAXPO

Related Products

Food and Beverage Cost Control, 6th Edition

Handbook of Food Processing: Food Safety, Quality, and Manufacturing Processes

Methods for Developing New Food Products, Expanded Second Edition

New Food Product Development: From Concept to Marketplace, Third Edition

You must login or register in order to post a comment.

Report Abusive Comment

Subscribe For Free!
  • Print & Digital Edition Subscriptions
  • eNewsletter
  • Online Registration
  • Subscription Customer Service

More Videos

Events

January 1, 2030

Webinar Sponsorship Information

For webinar sponsorship information, visit www.bnpevents.com/webinars or email webinars@bnpmedia.com.

View All Submit An Event

Poll

Best New Snack Products 2019

Vote for the Best New Snack Product Of 2019
Poll Archive

Products

Advances in Science & Engineering of Rice

Advances in Science & Engineering of Rice

See More Products
sfwb events
best new snack and bakery products 2019

Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery Magazine

december 2019 sfwb

2019 December

December's Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery publication features our cover report: The Top 50 Snack and Bakery Companies; plus much more!
View More Create Account
  • More
    • Associations
    • Columns
    • Custom Content & Marketing Solutions
    • Digital Literature
    • Food & Beverage Brands
    • Interactive Product Spotlights
    • Market Research
    • SFWB Store
    • Want More?
    • Privacy Policy
    • Subscribe
    • Survey And Sample

Copyright ©2019. All Rights Reserved BNP Media.

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing