THE LEVEL OF AUTOMATION OF “CARASAU†BREAD PRODUCTION PLANTS

Currently, the lowest productivity of workers involved in the production of the “carasau bread†is in those plants where automation has still not reached optimal levels in certain parts of the process, such as, for example, in the cutting and separating of the puff pastry. In the present work we analyse and compare the performance of three systems of cutting and separating in three different types of plant: by hand (traditional); by hand with a conveyor belt that supplies the workers with the material (traditional with conveyor belt) and completely mechanized (continuous). The experiment showed that the use of an automated system of cutting supplied from a conveyor belt reduced the time of the cutting phase for puff pastry by 87.1% with respect to hand cutting supplied by conveyor belt and by 87.9% with respect to the traditional system. If we consider the hourly productivity of the workers, we see that use of a conveyor belt increases productivity in a traditional bakery by 42.3%, while the use of the continuous system increases productivity by 87.8% compared to the traditional system and by 78.3% with respect to hand cutting supplied by conveyor belt.