AI: The when, where, how and why of integration

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AI: The when, where, how and why of integration

1 Jul 2025

Mari Rydings

Mari Rydings is a versatile content creator, editor and marketer with experience developing dynamic, results-driven materials for B2B and B2C audiences. As the editorial director for Avant Food Media, she leads the day-to-day editorial operations for the company’s print and digital magazines, newsletters and social media platforms. Outside of work, she loves reading, hiking, putting together jigsaw puzzles and spending time with her husband and their twin daughters.

COCO BEACH, PUERTO RICO — In today’s world, any conversation about how to optimize operational efficiencies includes some mention of AI. When it comes to commercial baking operations, those conversations are often focused on when, where, how and why to integrate this rapidly evolving technology.

The Baking Industry Forum (BIF), BEMA’s working group of bakers and suppliers dedicated to discussing the industry’s top issues, identified AI as its priority topic for 2025-26, and during BEMA Convention 2025, held June 25-28 in Coco Beach, Puerto Rico, several group members highlighted the technology’s potential to enhance nearly every aspect of a bakery, from the production floor to employee recruitment.

Reading Bakery Systems sponsored the panel discussion, “From Tasks to Transformation: AI Across the Production Spectrum,” which included Chad Larson, COO for Springfield, IL-based Mel-O-Cream Donuts; Brandon Brilliant, BakeTech general manager for AMF Bakery Systems; Justus Larson, VP of operations for Portland, OR-based US Bakery; Mike Porter, president and COO of Norwalk, OH-based New Horizons Baking Co.; and Richard Ybarra, senior manager of manufacturing engineering for Publix Super Markets.

In the first part of the presentation, Brillant focused on how bakers can use AI to optimize productivity and efficiency, reduce waste, and save energy.

“Change is coming fast … this is something we can do today if we have the correct amount of data collection paired with the right model.” — Brandon Brilliant | BakeTech general manager | AMF Bakery Systems

“At its core, artificial intelligence is just computers doing math exceptionally fast,” Brilliant said. “There have been monumental gains in computer power in the last 15 to 20 years. How are we going to use this for good, and how are we going to use that extreme computing power to drive real benefits that fits in all our businesses?”

Predictive maintenance — augmenting equipment with sensors that monitor systems in real-time and analyzing the resulting data — is a logical first step for bakeries wanting to integrate AI, Brilliant said, and the good news is that most bakers already use it. The key is to apply it at every step in the production process, from ingredient handling to packaging.

“After you’ve gone up and down the production line and augmented your individual equipment at every point in the process, then you start putting those pieces together, slowly making set point correction adjustments throughout the production line,” he said. “At the end of the day, when these systems tend to each other and network on an endless level system, you have a single AI model that can benchmark products without requiring operating information. That results in waste reduction and energy savings.”

The secret to success? Collecting and sharing as much data as possible. Data is essential to developing a machine learning algorithm that will continually gather experience, make better decisions and, over time, increase performance.

“If you don’t have the data, none of this works,” Brilliant said. “Change is coming fast, and the neatest thing is that the technology exists today. This is something we can do today if we have the correct amount of data collection paired with the right model.”

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