From the Chocolate Vault · Case 1
Sometimes the impulse tasks have the greatest impact
While working on a project in China, my client and I were walking past the chocolate panning room when he suddenly stopped and said, “Come in here for a minute.”
Inside were six traditional chocolate pans, each with an operator working a batch of around 50 kg of finished product.
At the other end of the room sat a new, locally built belt coater, about 1800 mm wide and taking up a substantial part of the room.
I asked the obvious question: “Why aren’t you using it?”
He explained that the machine had been installed and everything functioned correctly, but the operators didn’t really understand how to run it. They were, understandably, a little intimidated by it.
So I suggested we spend a day with the operators, run a batch slowly, and explain what each part of the process was actually doing.
A day on the floor
The next morning I started with a pre-start check. Mechanically, everything worked, but a number of the process settings were well out.
Together with the operators, we worked through the machine step by step. We adjusted and discussed:
- Chocolate temperature and flow
- Air temperature and airflow
- Belt speed
- Product centre quality and condition
- Coating development
- Smoothing and finishing
Rather than simply setting the machine for them, I had the operators make the adjustments themselves.
We talked about what to watch for, how the product should move, how the airflow should feel, what changes in temperature were doing to the coating, and how to recognise when the process was ready to move to the next stage.
By the end of the day, they weren’t just operating the machine. They were beginning to understand it.
That happened to be my last day on site. Soon afterwards, COVID restrictions prevented me from returning to China, and nothing more was said about that day.
Two years later
During a Teams meeting with the client and his development team, he unexpectedly brought it up. From that day onwards, the operators had never looked back.
- They mastered the belt coater and understood how to control the process.
- Their jobs became easier.
- Output increased approximately six-fold.
- Product quality and consistency improved.
- The business finally had the confidence to properly promote and grow that range of products.
What started as an unplanned walk into a panning room became one of the most valuable days of the project.
The lesson
One thing I have seen many times in manufacturing is that experienced operators can know a manual process extremely well, yet struggle when that same process is transferred to automated equipment.
The knowledge is already there. They understand the product, what good looks like, how it should feel and how it should behave. The challenge is translating that practical knowledge into machine settings, controls and process parameters.
Once the operators understand that the automated machine is simply controlling the same fundamentals they already know, the intimidation disappears.
That is often when automation starts to deliver what it was purchased for.
Mark Tubman, ChocCreator
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