This website uses cookies primarily for visitor analytics. Certain pages will ask you to fill in contact details to receive additional information. On these pages you have the option of having the site log your details for future visits. Indicating you want the site to remember your details will place a cookie on your device. To view our full cookie policy, please click here. You can also view it at any time by going to our Contact Us page.

Close

Geary’s Bakery moves to automated label verification

13 August 2023

Producing one million loaves and more than five million rolls weekly, as part of it dual-site modernisation plan, a family-run bakery has switched from manual verification checks to an efficient offline label verification system.

In 2018, Geary’s received £15m of investment to support its development of a new, purpose-built factory in Leicester. Offering a wide range of SKUs, the BRCGS-approved and AA+ artisan bakery realised that to keep pace with its growth and new retailer stockists, a robust label verification solution that could scale up alongside their expansion plans was needed. 

In May 2022 Karen Walters, Technical Manager at Geary’s, started to scope out label verification options which led to a meeting with JentonDimaco. Within two months CapEx budget for the project was confirmed and two offline semi-automated OCR Veri-PACK label verification vision units, together with a Veri-CENTRAL SQL server, were installed at the Barrow-upon-Soar site. More recently, a replica solution comprising another two units and database went live at Geary’s Glenfield site.  

Given the multiple variants of craft bakery products, comprising bloomers, rustics, malted loaves and the latest – Jason’s Sourdough, named after the company’s master baker and Executive Director Jason Geary – the semi-automated offline solution catered to the bakeries’ immediate needs. 

The risk of mislabelling is generally higher on shorter product runs involving multiple packaging types, explained Steve Wainwright, Sales Director at Dimaco. He said: “Geary’s bake in small batches. Because of these short-run lines, there tends to be multiple product changeovers per day. Geary’s was also dealing with varied packaging shapes, flexible packaging, labels on sticky bags, as well as closure tags systems. Coupled with supplying multiple products to multiple customers, manual label checks was fast becoming untenable.

“Ensuring that the label used on each and every product matches the work order, printing them in real-time to ensure there’s no mix up, and linking this to the database and live MRP system, helps to significantly reduce human errors.” 

Batch checking 
Proofing labels, gathering physical copies at regular intervals – hourly, at the start of production and for every bread batch changeover – had reached an unsustainable tipping point for Geary’s. It was proving to be both labour intensive, challenging to resource and generated volumes of worksheets which had to be archived for years. Simply by eliminating the paperwork element and moving to batch checks performed at the same intervals on two Veri-PACK units has resulted in savings at both bakery sites. “Paper records are always more vulnerable to being misplaced. They are also time consuming to retrieve. In the event of a label recall or audit, speed is of the essence,” said Karen. 

The offline Veri-PACK units were placed close to the product lines. Every half hour, at the start and end of each product changeover, and after a line stop exceeding five minutes, a user inserts the pack into a Veri-PACK unit, logs in and electronically verifies all the label data against the latest MRP production data files. An image is taken. The results are then stored in a database, enabling auditable records to be instantly called up when required.

By checking labels against robust MRP data sources and catching mislabelled products early before they exit the factory doors, the Dimaco systems are helping to prevent good products from being discarded. 


Contact Details and Archive...

Print this page | E-mail this page