C&T DESIGN SENDS ITS EMPLOYEES TO A TRAINING EVENT TO LEARN FROM A PROFESSIONAL CHEF AS PART OF THEIR CAREER DEVELOPMENT.
“Being nimble and able to react is critical right now.”
— Rob August Vice President Ali Group
across industries, Maahs points to Ford’s decision earlier this year to idle some of its assembly plants because the global chip shortage led to a large stockpile of trucks that were waiting for control boards. Productivity is unlikely to improve up until those underlying issues are resolved. “Labor effi ciency has been a challenge,” adds Rob August, vice president of Ali Group. “Parts availability and training new employees both play a role.” Fortunately, there are signs that actual equipment output is at a turning point. The St. Louis Fed has reported an upward trend in the manufacturing of commercial and service industry machinery, with production levels reaching their highest since 2014. Still, it’s going to take more time before the supply of foodservice equipment reaches an equilibrium with customer demand.
“Material fl ow and availability needs
to correct itself before supply can catch up to demand. It’s not just chips and control boards either,” Maahs says. “For manufacturers who have adopted a global supply chain, there is now a push to reshore as much as possible. In Europe and Asia, there are ongoing
challenges that need to be solved. Improvements have been minimal, mostly with logistics and freight easing from Asia to the United States.” August is optimistic that as pent-up demand eases and materials become more readily available, true progress can be made in the near future. “I think that over the next six to 12 months, we’ll gain some traction on shipping our backlog.” Yet for conditions to truly normalize, the consensus is that the very concept of “normal” needs to be redefi ned. With today’s rising infl ation and gas prices presenting a much different economy than the one that existed pre-pandemic, adaptability is crucial. “Being nimble and able to react is critical right now,” August says. “We might be facing a recession. We could even be looking at stagfl ation, so I’m not looking at our business as returning to something called ‘normal.’ We’re just looking to work within what exists today, keeping an eye on material costs, labor costs and incoming orders. We’ve all done the best we can to increase production, but certainly don’t look at where we are today in shipping as a guarantee that this is just going to continue.”
Maahs believes the market is starting to develop a better understanding of that new normal. “I don’t look back and say, ‘When will we be back to normal?’ I don’t believe that happens,” he says. “It’s more a question of what does a new normal look like, and how can we do our best to get there? Many of us are operating in a world of capacity restraint. Many are reducing product offerings. There will be improvements in some areas, but I don’t see the electronic component issues improving near term. That will take long term infrastructure improvements in production capacity, which doesn’t come quickly.”
Effi ciency T rough Automation As manufacturers are trying to settle
on a new normal for their operations, the end users of their equipment are likewise looking for technology solutions to help them adapt to the post-pandemic world. Automation has been hovering at the fringes of the industry for years – popping up in the form of cooking controls or specialized devices like robotic pizza makers. But it has not yet become the widespread technology that no kitchen can live without.
Summer 2022 23
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