The Tech Center

C.H. Babb Expands Plant by 50% and Unveils New Tech Center

Our C.H. Babb Tech Center provides a growing industry need for customers, a new in-house oven test facility! Product testing is an on-going process within the tech center. Customers can check their product's temperature and examine its quality and appearance. C.H. Babb has provided an assortment of high-end equipment within their lab to help customers try to simulate their own baking environment.

In a move designed to keep up with growing demand and provide industry-leading service to its customers, C. H. Babb, the world's leading tunnel oven manufacturer, recently built a 25,000 square foot addition to its United States facility located in Raynham, Massachusetts, increasing its total space by 50%. The centerpiece of the addition is a new state-of-the-art Tech Center that offers everything a customer's baking staff needs to prepare and test baked goods, including a fully-equipped kitchen and a 50-foot-long test oven.

"The purchase of a new tunnel oven is a major capital investment for our customers," explained company president Charles Foran. "By giving them an opportunity to test-drive our ovens before they buy, we're able to prove to them that we can deliver the product quality and consistency they require. At the same time, we're often able to achieve significant reductions in bake time and fuel usage, which can have a huge impact on productivity and profitability. They leave here convinced and confident in their purchase decision."

Located at the rear of the manufacturing plant, the Tech Center is completely designed around the needs of visiting customers with a separate entrance, reception area, conference room, and loading dock to accept other vendors' equipment (which may be key to the test), in addition to the lab facilities and test oven area.

The configuration of the Tech Center ensures maximum security and confidentiality for Babb's national and international customers during the testing process - a key requirement for many bakers who guard their product recipes and preparation methods zealously.

The largest space in the Tech Center is the test oven area, which is dominated by a 50-foot-long hybrid air impingement oven with an independent steam and evacuation section. The test oven features all the characteristics needed to provide a successful test bake. This area also includes a Babb high-velocity impingement test cooler. By using temperature probes and graphing the results, Babb test engineers are able to compare cooling methods and demonstrate how a Babb impingement cooler can accelerate cooling - and consequently, production throughput - while ensuring product quality and consistency.

Babb is currently preparing to install an indirect-fired stone hearth oven and automatic tray proofer in the test area to provide customers with more options for testing baking methods and related technologies.

Adjacent to the test oven area is a fully-equipped, commercial-grade lab for customers to prepare their recipes, including complete mixing, proofing, and retarding capabilities. The Tech Center also includes both a walk-in refrigerator and freezer. In addition to enabling customers to store perishable ingredients, these facilities support the testing of refrigerated products, such as cheesecake and frozen pies.

Besides giving customers a chance to test the baking performance of Babb tunnel ovens, the Tech Center allows them to observe the cleaning and maintenance of Babb ovens and CIP systems.

While Babb officials expect most of their test oven users to be prospective customers contemplating a purchase, the Tech Center is also available as a research facility for customers seeking to refine their baking processes, establish product-specific bake times and temperatures or experiment with different baking technologies to improve quality and increase throughput. This allows customers to stay ahead of the competitive curve by reducing costs and maximizing plant space.

For customers who have already decided to purchase an oven from C.H. Babb, the Tech Center provides all the necessary resources and equipment to perform oven design and engineering.

"Every Babb oven is custom-built to each customer's unique requirements. Our complete architectural department takes into account equipment layout and building configuration for each customer," said Charles Foran. "That's why we've equipped the Tech Center conference room with a computer workstation, projection system, and wireless networking. This allows us to bring together all the people involved in the project - the customer, our design engineers, our vendor partners, as well as our architectural team - and actually design the oven and the appropriate plant layout together on the large screen in real time. By the time we're done, we can be sure that each customer has the optimum oven and production line design for their baking needs, production requirements, facilities, and resources."

Customer response to Babb's earlier Tech Center had been more than enthusiastic, prompting the company to expand with its new USDA style tech lab. Within days of completion, the facility was already hosting its first baking test, and several customers have reserved testing time over the next three months.

This positive response is not surprising. According to an article on the oven purchasing process published in the July 2006 issue of Baking & Snack magazine, "... most customers demand testing and process validation prior to oven installation. Be sure this is offered by suppliers you consider." The new Tech Center enables C.H. Babb to do just that - and much more.

C.H. Babb, America's leading tunnel oven manufacturer

C.H. Babb Company, Inc. • 445 Paramount Drive, Raynham, MA 02767
Phone: 508-977-0600 • Fax: 508-977-1985 • Email: sales@chbabb.com