Until we met JEROS, we had two full-time employees to fill and empty our old tray cleaner for 7000 trays daily. Manually! Now it's all done automatically! And as a result, we currently only have one employee to clean all our trays – and it's more or less a secondary task next to his other work.
Case story | Meet Bäcker Görtz
Automated and quick cleaning and oiling of baking trays free up valuable time.
Meet Bäcker Görtz
Get an insight into the traditional and innovative bakery
A baker's passion for tradition and innovation
The bakery's founding in 1963 marks the beginning of a fast-paced family history! Ute and Peter Görtz Senior set off their dream of owning a bakery in the Oppau district of Ludwigshafen. And the recipe for success is simple:
The Görtz family bakes natural, delicious, and, above all, fresh bread and pastries for their guests and customers every day. They are passionate bakers who master their craft and are proud of their homeland, which traditionally stands for enjoyment: cereals grown in the surrounding regions, such as the Kirchheimbolanden, form the basis of the bakery's baked goods.
Combined with regional ingredients, time, and the bakers' work, each product has its character.
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The challenge of Bäcker Görtz
Producing enormous quantities of high-quality bakery products daily requires a large number of baking and perforated trays. And these must be spotless; after all, there is no quality flaw more annoying to the consumer than the bottom of bakery products being unclean, which may only be discovered when unpacking them at home.
"We've always been generous regarding ensuring the essential cleanliness of the baking trays. For a long time, two employees were alternately busy manually loading our previous throughput tray cleaning machine with up to 7,000 baking and perforated trays for 15 to 17 hours daily," Frank points out.
The company has continued to expand - and as this means greater quantities of trays, Frank sees an obvious need for rationalization:
On the one hand, he and his assistant, Tim Büsch, want to alleviate the monotonous and physically exhausting work carried out by their employees and - on the other hand, also offer a change in the form of varying activities.
Furthermore, the old system had its day after years of intensive, daily use; this was reflected in the unsatisfactory cleaning results.
Their challenge led them to look at similar businesses to see how their tray cleaning was tackled.
Learn more about quick cleaning of baking trays with JEROS's tray cleaners ⇨
Solution & result
Visit the Bakery & Confectionary Industry to learn more
The automated tray cleaning system makes the daily job a minor task
After finding out about various system options at several manufacturers, none of which was suitable for their company, Görtz and Büsch more or less happened upon the solution during a visit to the Heitzmann bakery in Bad Krozingen:
The Danish cleaning systems manufacturer JEROS had set up one of their first automatic tray cleaning systems, comprising the automated tray cleaner - JEROS 9020 - and a new automatic feeding system.
"We saw the right answer for our tray cleaning issue straightaway in the form of this combined system, as apart from when loaded or emptied, the trays are not picked up by hand. So, we contacted JEROS's sales representative, Mr Glania. He came to visit us immediately to establish what our requirements of the new tray cleaning system were so that our requirements could be incorporated into the machine configuration in the manufacturer's factory," Büsch explains, looking back on the collaboration with Sales and Design, led by the Danish engineer, Per Rasmussen.
As requested by Görtz Bakery, this meant increasing the feed height of the cleaning machine by 20 centimeters to take around 170 trays, thereby providing back-friendly working conditions.
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Achieve these benefits with an automated tray cleaner with automatic tray insertion:
- Cleaning and oiling of 150 baking trays in 15 minutes
- Cleaning baking trays WITHOUT the use of water and chemicals
- A double pre-scraper system that optimizes the cleaning of the baking trays
- An electricity consumption of 1.1 to 1.5 kW per cleaning is equivalent to the consumption of a vacuum cleaner at home.
Görtz Bakery gets a customized tray-cleaning solution
In contrast to the standard tray trolleys - which only allow trays to be taken from the top - Görtz Bakery got customized constructions made on their initiative with hinged work surfaces and a side opening for removing the trays:
"This makes handling even easier as the trolleys can simply be moved to the relevant production facility, converted into a work surface in no time, allowing trays to be loaded with minimal effort," Frank Görtz explains.
As the tray cleaning system was ready for the Ludwigshafen company, set-up went smoothly, including commissioning by the service technician.
"Since then, only one employee has been needed to clean all of the trays; beforehand, the job took up his whole day, but now it is more or less a secondary task alongside other work. He is now also involved in preparing pastries - which he enjoys," reports Büsch.
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Learn more from our visit at Görtz Bakery
The loading of baking trays
After shaking the products off the perforated and baking trays in the dispatch department, the relevant picker lays these in one of the transport trolleys provided by Görtz that can hold up to 170 trays, with the baking side facing upwards.
When this is full, an employee moves it into the automatic loading unit housed in stainless steel and closes the safety door. After pressing the start button on the control panel on the side, the tray trolley is automatically latched into place by a pneumatic lock. Once a laser sensor has acquired the trays, the pneumatic lifting frame with eight special silicon vacuum-suction membranes lowers onto the top tray or perforated trays onto the two-centimeter-wide tray edge.
Next, the vacuum generated by the integrated vacuum pump grips the tray. The pneumatic lifting frame then lifts it and, after precision controlled vacuum compensation, transfers it to the feed opening of the docked JEROS 9020 industrial tray cleaner and then onto the actual cleaning process.
How the cleaning process is done
The JEROS 9020 industrial tray cleaner is designed for bakeries requiring 800 to 1,000 trays an hour. Most of this machine comprises easy-care stainless-steel sections or plates, while the large, pneumatic sprung top cover and side panels are made of solid plastic panels to improve sound absorption.
The 9020 model has six precision-cut rotating brushes with robust bristles customized to the cleaned material. These include three main cleaning brushes with replaceable side brushes for the turned-up tray edges, a hole-cleaning brush, and two for subsequent cleaning.
After the loading unit has placed a tray in the cleaning machine, the tray first passes a dual pre-scraper which removes any coarse debris; the first pair of feed rollers then push the tray through the main cleaning brushes running counter to each other above and below the tray, and both sides are pre-cleaned.
The second pair of feed rollers grip the tray and feed it to the other main cleaning brushes, where the remaining coarse dirt is removed. Concerning perforated trays, which the third set of transport rollers has retained, the process turns to cleaning the holes using a special rotating brush. The dirt is pushed upwards from below and removed by both subsequent cleaning brushes. The actual cleaning process is completed when the tray passes through the "finishing brushes."
Before dropping onto the tray trolley locked onto the back of the JEROS 9020, the newly cleaned trays first pass through the finely adjustable oil spraying unit, developed in cooperation with Boyens Backservice. Its six "Armix" nozzles apply a skinny layer of oil evenly and precisely.
"This system, along with the hygienic KEG deposit barrels, is a perfect solution, saving release agents and actual money," Tim Büsch reports.
JEROS 9020 is the right answer!
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Investment with a positive impact
"Our new, automatic tray cleaning system is one investment that has had a positive impact from its initial start-up. The heavy, tedious job which previously represented a daily assignment for one to two employees is now a job for one person, more or less as a small task alongside other work.
We are also delighted with the machine's reliability and cleaning results. Thanks to the finely metered oil spraying system, the trays get a skinny, yet perfect oil layer applied, which also means more cleanliness in and around the system," Frank Görtz concludes with satisfaction.
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