Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders

Operate or tend food or tobacco roasting, baking, or drying equipment, including hearth ovens, kiln driers, roasters, char kilns, and vacuum drying equipment.

Job Task

• Clear or dislodge blockages in bins, screens, or other equipment, using poles, brushes, or mallets.
• Fill or remove product from trays, carts, hoppers, or equipment, using scoops, peels, or shovels, or by hand.
• Observe flow of materials and listen for machine malfunctions, such as jamming or spillage, and notify supervisors if corrective actions fail.
• Observe temperature, humidity, pressure gauges, and product samples, and adjust controls, such as thermostats and valves, in order to maintain prescribed operating conditions for specific stages.
• Observe, feel, taste, or otherwise examine products during and after processing, in order to ensure conformance to standards.
• Open valves, gates, or chutes, or use shovels in order to load or remove products from ovens or other equipment.
• Operate or tend equipment that roasts, bakes, dries, or cures food items such as cocoa and coffee beans, grains, nuts, and bakery products.
• Push racks or carts in order to transfer products to storage, cooling stations, or the next stage of processing.
• Read work orders in order to determine quantities and types of products to be baked, dried, or roasted.
• Set temperature and time controls; light ovens, burners, driers, or roasters; and start equipment, such as conveyors, cylinders, blowers, driers, or pumps.
• Smooth out products in bins, pans, trays, or conveyors, using rakes or shovels.
• Test products for moisture content, using moisture meters.
• Weigh or measure products, using scale hoppers or scale conveyors.
• Clean equipment with steam, hot water, and hoses.
• Dump sugar dust from collectors into melting tanks and add water, in order to reclaim sugar lost during processing.
• Install equipment, such as spray units, cutting blades, or screens, using hand tools.
• Record production data, such as weight and amount of product processed, type of product, and time and temperature of processing.
• Signal coworkers in order to synchronize flow of materials.
• Start conveyors to move roasted grain to cooling pans and agitate grain with rakes as blowers force air through perforated bottoms of pans.
• Take product samples during and/or after processing for laboratory analyses.
• Lift racks of fish from washing tanks and place racks in smoke chambers.
• Remove salt-cured fish from barrels, hang fish on racks, and place racks in washing tank, turning valves to regulate fresh water flow.

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