Portrait WIESHEU
Baking machines yield rising profits
Step into any German bakery, butcher’s shop, supermarket or service station and the chances are you will smell the output of a WIESHEU product, even before you see the product itself. WIESHEU GmbH is one of the leading European manufacturers of innovative and stylish ovens for baking.
The company was founded in 1973 by the young Karlheinz Wiesheu, an enterprising young butcher whose first sales success was selling ovens to butcher shops. The fast expanding company quickly added convection ovens and combi-steamers to its product range. Then, in the Eighties, it started developing and marketing show ovens for bakers. More recent innovations include the development of Dibas – an intelligent system that WIESHEU claims is one of the best baking ovens in the world.
What WIESHEU and its competitors have done is move baking outside the box. Previously, bread rolls, pretzels and croissants were made in bakeries and then distributed to subsidiaries. Today however, even small shops with no special baking focus or knowledge can have their own oven and the sales personnel take care of the baking on the side. The ovens are largely automated – baking programs can be preset to the exact time and temperature required so that the most the staff have to do is place the uncooked items in the oven, press a button and go back later to retrieve the finished delicacies from the oven.
Smell of success
It has proved something of a hit. Despite a sluggish domestic economy, in 2007 WIESHEU turned over in excess of € 59, 5 million, up 11 per cent on the previous year, and employs around 350 people. Based in Affalterbach, just north east of Stuttgart, it has three other centres: Wolfen in eastern Germany, in Pittsburgh, USA and in Warsaw, Poland.
“In the international market, WIESHEU was not initially as successful as it was on home ground: international sales accounted for only a small part of turnover – just 15 per cent.
Strong partnerships and links within the EU, for instance with the French oven maker Fringand, as well as with former socialist countries and Asia, are stimulating strong growth in the international market. In 2007, overseas sales were 42 per cent of output with a strong upward trend. The most important target countries are Great Britain, Austria, Switzerland, Eastern Europe and the Benelux States.
Wide range
WIESHEU’s products include the Minimat range: small convection ovens which take up a minimum of space, yet offer quick and simple baking of appetising snacks. Further up the size scale is the Euromat convection oven range, designed for larger volumes but still with the core concept of sophisticated baking made simple and practical through clever design. There is also a Euromat combi-steamer, offering the optimum combination of cooking methods: roasting, baking or steaming.
Old fashioned baking coupled with the latest in modern technology, hygiene and comfort is made possible with the Ebo deck ovens. These are reliable, fast, energy efficient and flexible, with a choice of the number of baking chambers, and can be combined with a convection oven for tailored results, allowing users to recreate a bakers-shop atmosphere in virtually any shop or salesroom space. Ebo deck ovens are also available in an antique, nostalgia-awakening design.
Innovative design
The Dibas convection oven is the crowning achievement of more than 30 years’ experience in oven manufacturing—technically mature and years ahead of its time. It is visually striking and ergonomically efficient.
The most obvious feature of the Dibas oven is the double glass sliding door. This parks itself neatly out of the way inside the oven casing when access to the interior is required. This innovation looks good and it has practical advantages as well: there is a saving on the space required to open a conventional door, and there is no heat hazard caused by an open door.
Baking is activated and overseen by so-called Intelligent Control Units. With a simple operation to ensure safety and reliability, the ICU is nonetheless a sophisticated ‘brain’, regulating temperature and air movement within the oven to optimise baking and browning as well as minimising energy use.
The new IS control units are guided using a graphic programme menu and pictograms which can be easily and safely used, even by untrained personnel. These intelligent control units can be installed in the network and used with modems. It is therefore possible to programme and control them with a PC. And since all WIESHEU appliances will be equipped with the same control unit, it is now possible to connect up to eight appliances at one station in the network, by means of a CAN-Bus, and programme them centrally with a PC.
With this new and standardised concept for control units, WIESHEU provides exacting and replicable production standards in all appliances, as well as contributing to a solution which reduces programming and operating errors in daily use to a minimum.
Programming
Because customers demand product variety and high quality, the ability to update or modify an oven’s programming quickly is essential. In addition, decision makers from a company’s head office often wish to log operational and usage data for the individual ovens in order to ensure optimum capacity utilisation in each subsidiary.
Until recently, service technicians travelled with a laptop computer, connected it by cable to the oven’s control system, booted it up and then transferred the new baking programs. At the end, the laptops had to be shut down again. Steadily evolving communications hardware has produced a simpler solution.
Palmtop computers are now used, as they are cheaper than laptops and offer a significantly better battery life. Software on the palmtops allows engineers too quickly and efficiently upload new instructions to the ovens’ master control units. The software manages up to 99 baking programs per oven. Each baking program can in turn contain up to eight baking steps.
For example, the program for baking croissants can entail preheating the oven for half an hour at 200 degrees, then baking for five minutes at 180 degrees, then leaving things to cool down for several minutes. Then the dough portions are sprayed with steam and left to cool again.
A patented automatic cleaning system, called ProClean, means the oven can be cleaned quickly and efficiently at the touch of a button
Combined technologies
WIESHEU prides itself on innovation, being ‘one idea ahead of the rest’. The company places great emphasis on research and development. One example of this is the recent introduction of a new infrared technology to cut the baking times. By using a special ceramic coating inside the baking chamber, infrared radiation is noticeably increased in comparison to conventional ovens, allowing heat transfer to penetrate much deeper into the dough.
With this Stir® oven, a core temperature of 97°C is achieved within three to four and a half minutes, effectively halving the baking time. The baking loss is also much lower than with conventional baking technology. This means larger amounts of cakes and biscuits, nicer crusts and a better taste.
WIESHEU’s latest brainwave is promising to take the industry by storm. The new Dibas Power is a convection oven with a new form of heating technology and has five or ten trays insert depending on the model. By combining a microwave and convection oven in one unit, the insides of the dough pieces are heated faster, which leads to a quicker rise.
With the Dibas Power oven, the reduction in baking time when baking bread rolls is 30 to 40 per cent, and when defrosting and baking pre-baked dough this reduction reaches 50 per cent. The Dibas Power is of special interest to anyone with little space in their sales area, or with a higher hourly output.
It’s got all the ingredients for success. First, robust usability coupled with sophistication of process. Secondly, ergonomics: our ovens make the most of limited space with a small footprint. Thirdly, with a continued emphasis on cutting edge research and technology, we can ensure we stay ahead of the game.
We want to grow our market share here in Europe and carve out further markets abroad. We know we have a brilliant product; all we have to do is to make it as easy as possible for a hungry world to beat a path to our door. That means good management, excellent service and listening to our customers.
