Restaurant Automation Analysis: Automatic Bun Feeder at Fast Food Chain

Restaurant Automation Analysis: Automatic Bun Feeder at Fast Food Chain

APPROACH

Antunes developed Automated Bun Feeding using a high throughput contact toaster.  Antunes’ first success in tackling the challenging task of automating bun handling was the development of another solution, the Automated Prep Line. Those learnings were the basis for the now modularized Automatic Bun Feeder solution.  Modularization supports deployment of a single machine which is the first step to a modular and incremental approach. Bun handling was chosen as one of the first projects to develop for several reasons, such as:

1. Many of our customers use Antunes contact toasters in their operation.
2. Today those toasters are fed manually which requires repetitive steps and team member engagement.
3. During peak hours, some kitchens barrel load toasters to keep up with demand.  This creates a drop in quality as the bun cools at a rate of 10 degrees per 15 second leading to a cooler sandwich being served to the customer.  As drive thru and delivery orders continue to grow, minimizing this loss in temperature will have a large impact on quality.  
4. Storing the buns in tubes provides a longer shelf life, minimizes damage from handling and protects the buns from exposure to the air in the kitchen and other unappetizing things such as dust.  

As Antunes continued investing in the development of the Automated Bun Feeder in-store testing from a third-party engineering firm was performed to provide a MODAPTS, Modular Arrangement of Predetermined Time Standards, cycle time analysis.

MODAPTS analyze the physical motions of team members, removing the uncertainty of team member efficiency leading to a better comparison of two states of operation.  The two states analyzed were a pre-ABF and post-ABF condition.   

QUALITY AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE BOOSTED

During the pre-ABF state that employees did, in fact, run more buns than needed causing a cooling of the buns and which came with the expected drop in quality.

This confirms that buns are sometimes pre-toasted or barrel loaded in bulk, and the quality of the sandwich is impacted.

CYCLE TIME SAVINGS 

In this analysis, the loading of buns into the toaster took 17% of the total cycle time to prepare a sandwich.  This offers a tremendous potential gain. Operators now have potential for redeployment of labor to customer-facing tasks.

With the ABF, team members can now be redirected to valued added tasks without any impact to food quality. This simplification helps employees by reducing their need to do repetitive tasks which could help improve team member retention.

In addition, 27-47% of the total walk time in the preparation of a sandwich was utilized getting to and from the toaster for the manual feed.  The ABF eliminates these steps.

TEAM MEMBER SAFETY 

Not only were steps eliminated, but the pre-ABF operator bun loading process currently requires line operators to use their body weight as force to help maneuver bun loading equipment and reach for the buns, all with a decreased range of vision.

This repetitive motion and constrained workspace create significant ergonomic and protentional hazardous issues for the operator.

With extra steps eliminated, team members have less opportunity for error or safety concerns.

KEY FINDINGS – AUTOMATIC BUN FEEDER BY ANTUNES BENEFITS OPERATOR, TEAM MEMBERS AND CUSTOMER

This analysis demonstrated several gains associated with the Antunes Automatic Bun Feeder: 

• When running multiple orders in a row, wherein operators can prompt bun loading by pressing the ABF button while simultaneously attending to a prior order, the result is the complete elimination of waiting times during ABF bun loading and machine toasting processes. In this study, this translated to a recorded time of 0 seconds for these activities. This is where the ABF is most effective. 

• The measured cycle times per sandwich, from consecutive sandwich making, were from 15% to 25% faster with the ABF. 

During peak periods, this translates to processing more orders for cars in the drive-through and serving hotter food to the customer.   

• The ABF eliminates tedious, repetitive steps leaving fewer steps and better ergonomics conditions that improves team member’s experience.

• In slow periods where the toaster time was the critical path, smaller gains were available.  However, it is important to note that the kitchen was staffed at a pre-ABF level.   While outside this study’s scope, slow periods may allow the kitchen to operate with reduced personnel.  

• 37% labor savings during busy periods.   

Learn more about the Automatic Bun Feeder: https://antunes.com/cooking-products/kitchen-automation/automatic-bun-feeder/

Antunes Automation Solutions: https://antunes.com/cooking-products/kitchen-automation