The Scoop on Maintaining an Ice Cream Manufacturing unit Cool

Working in an ice cream manufacturing facility is a dream for anybody who enjoys the frozen dessert. For management programs engineer
Patryk Borkowski, a job on the largest ice cream firm on the planet can also be a good way to place his automation experience to make use of.

Borkowski works on the Superior Prototype and Engineering Centre of the multinational shopper items firm
Unilever. Unilever’s company umbrella covers such ice cream manufacturers as Ben & Jerry’s, Breyers, Good Humor, Magnum, and Partitions.

Borkowski maintains and updates tools on the innovation middle’s pilot plant at Colworth Science Park in Sharnbrook, England. The corporate’s meals scientists and engineers use this small-scale manufacturing facility to experiment with new ice cream formulations and novel manufacturing strategies.

The truth of the job may not precisely stay as much as an ice cream lover’s dream. For security causes, consuming the product within the plant is prohibited.

“You’ll be able to’t simply put your mouth beneath the nozzle of an ice cream machine and fill your stomach,” he says.

For an engineer, although, the advanced chemistry and processing required to create ice cream merchandise make for fascinating problem-solving. A lot of Borkowski’s work includes enhancing the environmental impression of ice cream manufacturing by slicing waste and decreasing the quantity of power wanted to maintain merchandise frozen.

And he loves engaged on a product that places a smile on the faces of shoppers. “Ice cream is a deeply indulgent and completely happy product,” he says. “We love working to ship a superior style and a superior strategy to expertise ice cream.”

Ice Cream Innovation

Borkowski joined Unilever as a management programs engineer in 2021. Whereas he’s not allowed to debate most of the particulars of his analysis, he says one of many initiatives he has labored on is a modular manufacturing line that the corporate makes use of to develop new sorts of ice cream. The setup permits items of apparatus akin to sauce baths, nitrogen baths for shortly freezing layers, and chocolate deposition programs to be seamlessly switched out and in in order that meals scientists can experiment and create new merchandise.

Ice cream is an enchanting product to work on for an engineer, Borkowski says, as a result of it’s inherently unstable. “Ice cream doesn’t wish to be frozen; it just about needs to be melted on the ground,” he says. “We’re attempting to bend the chemistry to bind all of the substances right into a semistable combination that provides you that nice style and feeling on the tongue.”

Making Manufacturing Extra Sustainable

Serving to design new merchandise is only one a part of Borkowski’s job. Unilever is focusing on sustainability throughout the corporate, so slicing waste and enhancing power effectivity are key. He just lately helped develop a testing rig to simulate freezer doorways being repeatedly opened and closed in outlets. This helped accumulate temperature knowledge that was used to design new freezers that run at increased temperatures to save lots of electrical energy.

In 2022, he was quickly transferred to considered one of Unilever’s ice cream factories in Hellendoorn, Netherlands, to uncover inefficiencies within the manufacturing course of. He constructed a system that collected and collated operational knowledge from all of the manufacturing facility’s machines to determine the causes of stoppages and waste.

“There’s a deep satisfaction in figuring out the machines that we’ve programmed make one thing that folks purchase and luxuriate in.”

It wasn’t simple. A number of the machines have been older and now not supported by their producers. Additionally, they ran legacy code written in Dutch—a language Borkowski doesn’t converse.

Borkowski ended up reverse-engineering the machines to determine their working programs, then reprogrammed them to speak with the brand new data-collection system. Now the data-collection system might be simply tailored to work at any Unilever manufacturing facility.

Discovering a Love for Know-how

As a baby rising up in Stargard, Poland, Borkowski says there was little to point that he would grow to be an engineer. At college, he liked writing, drawing, and studying new languages. He imagined himself having a profession within the inventive industries.

However within the late Nineteen Nineties, his dad and mom obtained a second-hand pc and a modem. He shortly found on-line communities for expertise lovers and commenced studying about programming.

Due to his rising fascination with expertise, at 16, Borkowski opted to attend a technical highschool, pursuing a technical diploma in electronics and studying about parts, soldering, and meeting language. In 2011, he enrolled on the
West Pomeranian College of Know-how in Szczecin, Poland, the place he earned a bachelor’s diploma in automation and robotics.

When he graduated in 2015, there have been few alternatives in Poland to place his abilities to make use of, so he moved to London. There, Borkowski initially labored odd jobs in warehouses and manufacturing amenities. After a quick stint as an digital technician assembling ultrasonic scanners, he joined bakery firm
Brioche Pasquier in Milton Keynes, England, as an automation engineer.

This was an thrilling transfer, Borkowski says, as a result of he was lastly doing management engineering, the self-discipline he’d all the time needed to pursue. A part of his duties concerned each day upkeep, however he additionally joined a crew constructing new manufacturing strains from the bottom up, linking collectively equipment akin to mixers, industrial ovens, coolers, and packaging items. They programmed the machines so all of them labored collectively seamlessly with out human intervention.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, new initiatives went on maintain and work slowed down, Borkowski says. There gave the impression to be little alternative to advance his profession at Brioche Pasquier, so he utilized for the management programs job at Unilever.

“Once I was briefed on the work, they instructed me it was all R&D and each mission was totally different,” he says. “I assumed that appeared like a problem.”

The Significance of a Theoretical Basis

Management engineers require a broad palette of abilities in each electronics and programming, Borkowski says. A few of these might be realized on the job, he says, however a level in topics like automation or robotics offers an vital theoretical basis.

The most important piece of recommendation he has for fledgling management engineers is to remain calm, which he admits might be tough when a supervisor is pressuring you to shortly get a line again as much as keep away from manufacturing delays.

“Typically it’s higher to step away and provides your self a couple of minutes to assume earlier than you do something,” he says. Dashing can typically lead to errors that trigger extra issues in the long term.

Whereas working in manufacturing can typically be worrying, “There’s a deep satisfaction in figuring out the machines that we’ve programmed make one thing that folks purchase and luxuriate in,” Borkowski says.