The Importance of Process Standardization in Bakery Companies.

Written by:Diomer Antonio Galán Rincón.

Bachelor's Degree.Public Accounting / MSc.Science of Higher Education.

First of all, a big greeting to all the friends of Steem and especially to the members of this prestigious PH community. Today I come to share with you a publication related to the importance of process standardization in bakery companies, companies that are extremely important for the production of one of the main foods in the diet of human beings.

Every food company or organization must have a control of operations for the continuous improvement of the production process, in order to optimize and increase the quality of a product. "Continuous improvement is a consequence of an orderly way of managing and improving processes; identifying causes, establishing plans, as well as studying each of its stages in order to standardize and control operations", according to Gutiérrez, (2010).

Currently there are few companies that have a level of quality assurance of their products to ensure continuous improvement of their processes, making use of a series of standards such as the NTP ISO 9001:2015 as these emphasize the continuous improvement of quality in processes, performing optimization and standardization.

Each operation involves a standardized procedure that are documents consisting of a specific sequence of events that describe a particular activity in order to ensure standardization during its execution, as they ensure that the operations carried out in companies are established and maintained over time, usually such procedure is supported by good manufacturing practices (GMP).

Bread is a product of varied and spongy consistency resulting from the baking of a dough of wheat flour, salt and sugar to taste and drinking water, fermented by the addition of active yeasts, with other mixtures for its filling such as arequipe, guava or cheese, among others.

It is noteworthy that the bakery industries over time have implemented innovation in their techniques, leaving aside artisanal practices and imposing technology in the use of machinery and equipment for their production lines; as a result of competitiveness and the opening of markets, which has resulted in large entrepreneurs to technify the production areas and seek ways to achieve continuous improvement within their production plants.

* Reception of raw materials: Each of the materials for the production of the different products is received and organized in the warehouse; prior to reception, they are visually examined for acceptance.

* Pre-mixing: In this area the raw materials are weighed. This area is where the raw materials are weighed according to the number of orders to be placed.

* Mixing: This stage consists of mixing the raw materials uniformly in a mixer that consists of two stages: slow mixing for homogenization of the ingredients with an approximate time of 9 minutes, and a fast mixing of 4 minutes for kneading and volume increase.

* Dough sectioning and weighing: It is in charge of dividing the weight determined for the different types of bread, the sectioning and weighing is done by means of a hopper that controls the weight of the dough.

* Dough forming: It is to be able to give the ball shape to the dough portion and its objective is to reconstruct the structure of the dough after the division.

* Pre-fermentation: It comes directly from the balling and consists of a cabin that has inside trays where the dough is positioned for a previous fermentation at room temperature, approximately 6 minutes.

* Molding: In this stage the doughs are automatically molded, and manually taken to the molds.

* Fermentation Chamber: This operation is carried out by taking the carts containing the already molded breads in a chamber with controlled humidity and temperature conditions, for the growth of the bread, usually the bread lasts 4-5 hours in the fermentation chamber.

* Baking and demolding: In this part, the dough is baked at 190º-200º C. for approximately 35-50 minutes.

* Cooling chamber: After the baking stage, the breads are taken to cooling, in the first stage they are cooled with a current of air and then introduced into the chamber at a temperature of 15ºC.

* Slicing and packaging: It consists of automatic and semi-manual machines that slice and package the bread with the help of the workers.

* Dispatch: 10 loaves are stored in plastic baskets for their previous commercialization.

One of the benefits that every industry seeks in their processes is standardization, today is a tool that many organizations want to achieve because it increases productivity and processes will have consistent results; achieving optimization and in the same sense to have control of production.

For Aldana and Clavijo (2011), the term standardization refers to the formulation and implementation of guidelines or rules in order to be applied commonly and repeatedly to achieve order and uniformity in a procedure. To achieve an effective standardization it is of vital importance to evaluate each of the stages of the process in order to monitor, execute and control the production, with the purpose of the optimal development of the company to avoid errors in the operations.

Nowadays, the standardization of processes generates a competitive advantage for many organizations, the importance of it lies according to the needs that arise in a company, increasing the efficiency in each of the stages of a process or in a particular area.

I hope you like my article and I would appreciate all your comments.