Smooth out products in bins, pans, trays, or conveyors, using rakes or shovels.

“Smooth out products in bins, pans, trays, or conveyors, using rakes or shovels.” is a supplemental task performed by Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders. Among the occupation's 20 rated tasks, workers place it 5th by importance (#16 most important). About 36% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Position workpieces or materials on equipment. in Handling and Moving Objects

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T0.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Observe, feel, taste, or otherwise examine products during and after processing to ensure conformance to standards. · importance 4.6
• Take product samples during or after processing for laboratory analyses. · importance 4.6
• Set temperature and time controls, light ovens, burners, driers, or roasters, and start equipment, such as conveyors, cylinders, blowers, driers, or pumps. · importance 4.6
• Observe temperature, humidity, pressure gauges, and product samples and adjust controls, such as thermostats and valves, to maintain prescribed operating conditions for specific stages. · importance 4.4
• Observe flow of materials and listen for machine malfunctions, such as jamming or spillage, and notify supervisors if corrective actions fail. · importance 4.4
• Test products for moisture content, using moisture meters. · importance 4.3
• Record production data, such as weight and amount of product processed, type of product, and time and temperature of processing. · importance 4.3
• Weigh or measure products, using scale hoppers or scale conveyors. · importance 4.3
• Clear or dislodge blockages in bins, screens, or other equipment, using poles, brushes, or mallets. · importance 4.2
• Operate or tend equipment that roasts, bakes, dries, or cures food items such as cocoa and coffee beans, grains, nuts, and bakery products. · importance 4.2
• Signal coworkers to synchronize flow of materials. · importance 4.2
• Start conveyors to move roasted grain to cooling pans and agitate grain with rakes as blowers force air through perforated bottoms of pans. · importance 4.1
• Open valves, gates, or chutes or use shovels to load or remove products from ovens or other equipment. · importance 4.1
• Read work orders to determine quantities and types of products to be baked, dried, or roasted. · importance 4.0

See all tasks on the Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-10073,
  title  = {Smooth out products in bins, pans, trays, or conveyors, using rakes or shovels.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-10073}
}