There was a degree of institutional resistance to perceived ‘factory’ methods so, for acceptance, any solutions had to be clearly ‘low tech’, low cost and light-touch. A brief that could be approached through human-centred and experience design.

During a research phase spent observing and taking part in the manufacturing processes in the bakery, I noticed that the rolling and cutting of shortbread biscuits was extremely time consuming. Later, in the packing department I noticed that they were having to throw away biscuits that didn’t fit into the packaging.

This level of wastage was galling to see considering the time and also ingredient costs involved. Dairy products, especially butter (the key ingredient in shortbread), are some of the most expensive ingredients in the baking industry. But this also gave a clear in-point to the project.

Leveraging learnings from experience design I developed a simple, ‘friendly’ quality assurance tool which could be used to measure the diameter of the dough logs and mark the width of the biscuits to be cut. Ensuring that the final biscuits were standard sized and reducing waste (by an estimated 28%). The finished was as low-tech as possible, within the limitations of food hygiene regulation, of neutral colour, with soft edges and no numbers, rules or other ‘technical’ markings.

I worked on the bakery floor, gently introducing the tool to the bakers (a team including older and neurodiverse individuals) and easily achieved 100% willing acceptance.

Using existing stock-control and recipe software were were quickly able to establish that we were achieving improvements...

Time taken to produce a batch of 120 bags of 8 biscuits reduced by 20%.

Rejection rate of biscuits as too big, small, thin or thick reduced from 1 in 14 to 1 in 100

...which were easily communicable to the bakers as desirable outcomes.

I developed a small range of cutters, jigs and gauges for other parts of the bakery then, once they’d bedded into the daily bakery routine, I created a set of outline rules for tool development and briefed and trained a senior member of staff with access to 3D printing.

The bakery now generate their own tools as required, and I continue to provide design input and support.

I also occasionally receive free cake.