Swapping Ovens top and bottom

Pizza Shop Talk The Think Tank
1

We just went through a Friday running on only the bottom conveyor because of issues with the top. I finally got the top running again about midnight last night and it turned out to be a minor issue that I should have caught earlier. While cursing the top oven last night with my burner tore apart on the dough table, I did some math in my head, then double checked it with a calculator. My top oven is over 10 years old, runs an average of 11 hours per day, seven days a week. That is over 40,000 hours of run time. Using rough estimates, the bottom oven which only runs during Friday and Sat rush or big orders has about 2000 - 3000 hours.
So, you guys running double stack conveyors, do you ever swap out the top and bottom ovens to get more balanced wear on the equipment?

By the way I have lincoln 1450’s and in ten years they have only seen a serviceman about 3 times. Every time we have had an issue it has been the burner control circuit module (2 times) or the pilot flame sensor needing cleaning (several times). I think its a pretty good record for that many hours.

Rick

2

just tell the opening manager to use a different oven on different days much easier than swapping them over.

3

ya, we alternate oven use every other day, then both on busy days…

4

We also alternate which oven we use. We only run both about 20 days a year. Our ovens are MM wide belts. Each can put out about 70-80 pies per hour. When you add in wings, bread sticks, poppers, deep dish, calzones etc, the practical capacity is about 50 so one oven takes care of us most of the time.

No reason to wear out one oven and not the other.