Consistency is a virtue in baking no matter if the product is cookies, bread or cakes. How a company reaches product and manufacturing consistency is an enduring question that B.C. Bundt, a continuous cake manufacturer, answers by applying simple concepts to highly-automated baking operations. B.C. Bundt is a 15-year old company with manufacturing plants in Birmingham, Ala., Taylor, Pa., and a soon-to-open operation in Salt Lake City. By design and purpose, the three facilities are “mirror images of each other,” according to Jim Hokes, B.C. Bundt’s chief operating officer, and Bill McRee, the company’s president. For this reason, what is written about one applies equally to the other two. For this article, Baking Management visited Taylor, Pa.

Single-minded purpose

The first simple concept B.C. Bundt employs is focus: “We produce ring cakes, that is our market, and we pursue it aggressively,” McRee says.

In pursuit of this niche market, B.C. Bundt follows a systematic plan. It begins with funding. The company does not borrow money and pays for new operations with cash flow. “We could have built Salt Lake City before this, but we wanted to wait until we acquired enough capital from our existing operations,” McRee says.

B.C. Bundt also has no set amount for major capital expenditures. “We spend what’s necessary to help us run efficiently,” McRee adds.

Although its financing may be conservative, B.C. Bundt’s manufacturing operations and philosophy are not. The company operates seven days a week producing cakes on three shifts, 24 hours a day. It produces 2,000 lbs. of product per hour, employs 9-10 persons per shift and operates at 101% to 104% of capacity.

B.C. Bundt achieves these operating rates by merging people and equipment. “We look at what an individual can do and we design a manufacturing operation to get the most out of that individual,” Hokes says.

Because their product is highly specialized, Hokes and McRee had to use their engineering and manufacturing expertise to design, engineer and install customized equipment at their Birmingham Plant in 1986. Even as they were moving into their first plant, the two owners were planning a second one, which had to be “a mirror image of the first plant.” Why? Because experience told them the second plant doesn’t run as smoothly as the first because there is no one there to be a hands-on operator.

B.C. Bundt established a centralized administration operation at corporate headquarters in Tampa, Fla. to keep overhead costs down.

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