New Horizons Boosts Reliability with Innovative Spiral Belt Solution
New Horizons Baking Co. is known as a reliable baking partner for the quick-service restaurant industry. Every day the New Horizons team brings passion and pride to delivering precision, quality, and a dependable supply of English muffins and soft rolls to their customers. To boost efficiency, they prioritize continuous improvement and collaborate with trusted industry specialists to ensure peak performance.
Reoccurring, unplanned downtime the New Horizons team faced on their spiral cage cooling conveyor had begun to impact throughput levels, pull the maintenance team away from higher value actions, and impact their bottom line.
The Challenge
The spiral cage conveyor system cools delicate English muffins and is a critical step in New Horizons' baking process. Their current metal conveyor belt on the spiral system required regular maintenance and repairs. These unplanned repairs disrupted operations once or twice per month, at a cost of approximately $37,000 monthly. As the belt neared end of life, repairs increased to three to four times per week, driving costs up to $144,000 per month. The maintenance team immediately began to identify and plan for a new, innovative, and cost-effective solution as they knew quick action was needed to ensure product availability and delivery to their customers.
“We were originally worried about the plastic belt not cooling the product as quickly because of the tighter weave of the plastic belt versus the metal belt, but we have not had any issues. The plastic belt actually holds less heat over time than the stainless-steel belt did.” - Jonathan Myers Maintenance Manager, New Horizons Baking Co.
Cost Analysis
Maintenance and Product Loss Costs
| Metal Spiral Belt Maintenance | $1,100 a month - 4 hours a week | |
| Oil the wear guides with 1.25 gallons of food grade oil / ~ 5 gallons per month | ||
| Oil cost: $300 for 5 gallons | ||
| One maintenance technician | ||
| Metal Spiral Belt Unplanned Splice Repairs | $2,520 a month - 3 hours per instance | |
| Grind metal belt welds | ||
| Splice and weld new metal belt section | ||
| Dispose of all muffins on the belt to avoid metal particulate contamination | ||
| Clean entire belt to remove any metal particulates | ||
| Lost Time - Revenue Loss and English Muffin Waste | $140,000 per month - 4,266 lbs | |
| Lost revenue and three hours of downtime equating to 3,200 lbs or two dough batches | ||
| Product waste of 1,066 lbs as entire product on spiral would need to be discarded as welding particulates are a contamination risk | ||
| Cost increase as a result of downtime to support overtime to meet order requirements | ||
The 6400 Series belt is much faster and easier to repair. Now, with the new plastic belt, repairs will take a few minutes, there is no product loss, no cleaning time, and minimal time added to the production run at the end. After running the new plastic belt for eight months, the maintenance staff has not needed to do any standard weekly maintenance. The previous metal belt needed the wear strips to be oiled weekly, which took approximately four hours. Now, with the new plastic belt, the wear strips no longer need to be oiled.
“The new plastic belt is super simple to maintain and repair. There is no grinding involved, and this completely removes any metal contamination risk. This is significant, because if we do have to make a repair, any product on the spiral can remain, which means faster start up and less waste” - Jonathan Myers, Maintenance Manager, New Horizons Baking Co.
The Benefits of the 6400 Series Belt
The 6400 Series Belt delivered multiple benefits to the New Horizons Baking Co. maintenance team including:- Reduced maintenance with easy, weld-free repairs using the PowerKey™ design and simple rod removal system
- Oil-free maintenance as weekly oiling with food-grade grease is no longer required
- Less waste as the English muffins on the spiral do not need to be discarded if a repair is needed
- Greater than 45% open air flow ideal for proofing, cooling and freezing product while providing ample surface area for product to release from the belt
- 25% increased product volume compared to other plastic belting due to outside edge belt strength with the patented PowerKey design
- Easy cleaning and sanitation with the hygienically designed open rod and belt area for thorough cleaning
- Dispersed tension as the unique PowerKey design spreads tension across full line and hinge eyes
- Less end product loss as the material offers better release and transfer which reduces product waste
- Increased safety with self-extinguishing BSE material
Discover how the 6400 Series delivers greater productivity to bakery processers.
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