It is all about Fruitcakes! Collin Street Bakery (CSB), home of the world famous DeLuxe® Fruitcake, is a renowned Texas institution that’s been in operation since 1896. Based in Corsicana, this bakery has gained a global reputation for its traditional recipes, premium ingredients, and exceptional quality. Nowadays, they offer a wide array of baked goods such as pecan cakes, cookies, and pies, each crafted with meticulous attention to detail.
Customers can enjoy the Collin Street Bakery experience by visiting their charming storefronts or their online shop. Collin Street Bakery is an example of an enduring business, having served millions of quality baked goods for more than 125 years to 196 countries and all over the U.S.
The Situation
As demand for their products grew, President Thomas McNutt consulted with
TMAC to explore ways Collin Street Bakery could increase cake production
during the busy holiday season, ensuring more customers could enjoy their
classic dessert. Their sweet and delicious world famous DeLuxe® fruitcake is
made with crunchy pecans, hand-picked pineapple, and all-natural honey. The
baking process, involving the meticulous hand placement of pecans and
candied fruits by dozens of skilled decorators, was labor-intensive and time consuming,
making it challenging to meet the rising demand for their
DeLuxe® Fruitcake.
Mr. McNutt was also interested in reducing the bakery’s environmental impact as a way to be responsible to the community. During conversations with TMAC staff, he learned about the E3 assessments (Economy, Energy, and Environment), which provided a new perspective on the processes occurring onsite.
The Solution
TMAC trained Collin Street Bakery staff on tools that will allow them to identify the key actions that are valuable for the customer. These trainings were performed in English and Spanish to be accessible to the entire organization. TMAC work hand-in-hand with the cake decorators to identify and analyze all the movements involved in a cake decoration process. After several trials, the team was able to create a new process for cake decoration that broke down each step into smaller chunks, decreased overall movement, and increased cake production. The decorating team went from making 12 cakes per minute to 16 cakes per minute – a 33% increase!
Funded by an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant, the TMAC team also embarked on a sophisticated project at the bakery to monitor the efficiency and sustainability of the bakery’s refrigeration systems. The initiative involved the careful selection and installation of sensors to monitor key parameters: electrical power consumption, refrigeration temperatures, and cake loading efficiency. Overcoming the technical challenge of ensuring the sensors’ precision and reliability was crucial for accurate data collection and foundational to the project’s success. The team was tasked with integrating these sensors seamlessly and ensuring their data could effectively inform energy optimization strategies.
TMAC identified an opportunity for significant energy conservation, enabling an estimated reduction of up to 223,000 kWh of electricity annually, achieved by installing upgraded freezer controls. The new controls will optimize energy usage and provide insights for refining production planning and enhancing refrigeration system utilization. This will allow for a projected savings of approximately $13,500 in annual lowered cooling costs and extend the lifespan of the system compressors. A major challenge was establishing a reliable method for transmitting sensor data to a Microsoft Azure cloud service for real-time analysis. Creating a secure data pipeline and developing a custom Power BI dashboard allowed CSB management to visualize data, identify energy consumption patterns, address operational inefficiencies, and successfully leverage technology to accomplish environmental and operational objectives.
The Results
Through all the actions done by CSB and TMAC staff, the bakery was able to significantly improve their efficiencies and production costs. The decorators are now on the lookout for further improvement opportunities and management has a different way to visualize the data and workflow. All the initiatives not only increased capacity, but also raised morale of the employees, and helped CSB to save more than $213,500. This project was successful because a multidiscipline team, committed employees, and leadership worked to improve the process together.
“This simple change was transformational meeting the growing demands for our hand decorated DeLuxe® fruitcakes. Our team is excited about the training we have received from TMAC and we are looking forward to our ongoing partnership to support our continual improvement efforts.”
— Thomas McNutt, Collin Street Bakery President
