The Present Past
During the past year the global financial crisis, additional government regulations, advanced technological changes, universal unemployment, material cost increases and consumer economic conditions have had major influences on beverage producers and distributors. These influences have affected the decision-making process. Observations and discussions have revealed Significant Priority Issues (SPI) dependent upon business conditions and compliance regulations that have become continuing concerns for producers and distributors.
1. SKUs: The new volume trend has created situations involving marketplace shelf space availability, plant warehouse storage and order processing space and distribution capability-capacity. These have become significant issues and coupled with constant changes to existing packages, the SKU volume growth is challenging producers to develop production and distribution alternatives to serve the market. Different methods of distribution are being tried, additional storage space is an expensive option and delivery timing programs are being negotiated and implemented.
2. “Energy” Conservaton: This broad term refers to water, electricity and fuel. In 2011, energy issues gained momentum at corporate levels as a top priority to comply with newly created government regulations. The LEED approach, a program using design and energy criteria, is being employed for converting a plant to “green status.” For producers, the good news is a realistic need to conserve water, fuel and power. The bad news is the required training, implementation method and costs associated with compliance.
3. Machinery & Equipment: New technology water treatment systems have become more prevalent, economically feasible and support the water conservation effort. More aseptic packaging installations, along with modified aseptic containers, have appeared, impacting SKU handling, storage capability and material recycling programs. Robotic concept installations became more frequent, are still being developed for higher speed lines and have had successful applications at the palletizing operation. Automated ordering system applications are becoming operationally, economically and productively practical and desirable. This pre-distribution function, order picking and staging, has become a significant issue, has been highly productive and cost effective and has overcome labor intensive, inefficient and costly manual operations.
4. Asset Maintenance: Technologically advanced (automated, high speed, complex) machinery and equipment has re-emphasized the asset maintenance issue. Traditional PM program applications have been updated to address the significant priority status that machinery/equipment complexity has assumed.
Significant priority issues go beyond those mentioned here however: productivity (machine and labor), personnel availability and skills, waste control (materials and resources) and effective systems implementation also can be listed.
John Peter Koss, a beverage operations advisor, is a licensed registered professional engineer and has 50-plus years of beverage business experience. He can be reached at oleboss@aol.com.