I recently returned from a business trip to the Netherlands, where I had the wonderful opportunity to see the production facilities of one of the world’s largest players in the beverage industry. What struck me most was the sheer scale of the production facilities and how they manage to meet production targets daily. More importantly, it sparked my interest in understanding how large beverage companies ensure that production runs 100% smoothly despite fluctuating demand due to seasonality.
In South Africa, we are fast approaching the summer festive season, which means the production in the beverage industry will reach its peak during the next two months in preparation for the massive demand spike in December and January.
In the FMCG market, adaptability is key. Production must respond rapidly to the seasonal changes in demand. What becomes essential is ensuring the uptime of critical production assets and the continuation of operations, at all costs. When you are producing a fast-moving consumer item such as beverages, a loss in production capacity translates directly into a loss of sales on the consumer shelf.
In this article, I will briefly look at how beverage companies can ensure production uptime, especially during peak demand seasons where 100% production capacity is required.
To prevent assets from breaking down during important production runs, and to ensure that they can be fixed quickly and effectively when they do experience unforeseen breakdowns, optimal planning, and management of preventative maintenance activities as well as corrective maintenance activities is required.
To achieve this, good MRO planning is needed to establish which spare parts are required, when they will be needed and in what quantities. Additionally, provision must be made for the unplanned demand for spares, in case of emergency breakdowns.
Effective spare parts planning becomes even more important when there is a need to reduce costs associated with keeping and ordering spare parts required for maintenance activities.
At Gordian, the complex problem of optimising how a company manages their spare parts supply chain is approached by first measuring the spare parts supply chain performance against the following key performance indicators (KPIs):
To ensure asset uptime and 100% production capacity in peak demand months in the beverage industry, proper maintenance, MRO and spare parts inventory planning is essential.
In terms of spare parts management, this means ordering spare parts required for planned maintenance at the right time and in the right quantities. It also means following optimal stocking strategies for spares that could be required for unplanned maintenance activities at short notice.
