8 replies to this topic

[kuokht]

Dear all,
I am from beverage industry in charge of QA. Recently i was assigned a task to have cost reduction strategy from the manufacturing cost. I am clueless what kind of strategy that I should have. I could not touch on the raw material since it is under the control of R&D department. Any experience with you guy with how you do the cost reduction in your company?

Really appreciate the help as the example could become best practice for most of the company to apply.

Thank you.

PET

[sqf girl]

I am also in the beverage industry and in charge of QA.  I find it rather odd that someone of your title should be posed with the task of cost reduction in manufacturing.  In any case, here some of the ways our company has reduced manufacturing costs...

 

• Reduce our amount of wastewater
• Reduce BOD's in our wastewater
• Observe production processes and talk with production personnel about any tools and or equipment that may make their jobs easier and make the product manufacturing time faster, thereby reducing labor costs.

This is not really my area of expertise, but maybe this will trigger some ideas.

 

Best wishes.

[Cravin' Cajun?]

We recently re-negotiated our contracts with bulk chemical suppliers and vendors, and started purchasing cleaning chemicals in concentrated forms that can be diluted (way cheaper option). This has saved us a LOT of money.

[Simon]

You must have process waste, internal rejects, customer complaints.  

What do the measurements on these look like?  

Do you know what your main problems are?

 

Pick the highest cost item and then start an improvement project with the local team (including the operators).

 

Do a fishbone (cause and effect diagram), have a good brainstorm and come up with a prioritized action list.  Do the easy, low cost actions first and get some quick wins. Work through the actions until you have done all you can with the problem.

 

Then move onto the next problem and do the same.

 

A job for life.

 

Regards,

Simon

[QLD]

Dear all,
I am from beverage industry in charge of QA. Recently i was assigned a task to have cost reduction strategy from the manufacturing cost. I am clueless what kind of strategy that I should have. I could not touch on the raw material since it is under the control of R&D department. Any experience with you guy with how you do the cost reduction in your company?

Really appreciate the help as the example could become best practice for most of the company to apply.

Thank you.

PET

 

I find a good lean / six sigma book is a good place to start to get you thinking.

 

Depending on the issues you have I thought this was a pretty neat piece of kit for the beverage industry.

 

http://www.matthews..../Vision-Systems

 

 

Some of the major applications are:

• Inspecting presence, position and formation of a code like a date code or barcode
• Validating presence and positioning of labels
• Checking closures for tamper seals, correct caps by colour, dimensions etc
• Inspecting product for fill levels, product content etc
• Sorting products based on marking

 

•  

[AS NUR]

TO reduce your cost, you can try to decrease your waste such people says.. i.e. reduce your internal reject, and you have to increase your productivity, try to work together with your productionand engineering team .. You can use tools like OEE (overall Equipment Efectiveness) to monitor your progress.

 

Rgds

 

AS Nur

[aesahaetr_eldest]

in my place called CRP cost reduction program, like other people says you can start from product waste, internal reject, external complaint, etc, then make pareto diagram, using fishbone etc that from operation side, from Laboratory side you can reduce sampling or analysis but you need risk assesment first...

overall good luck with your cost reduction

[Mr. Incognito]

Depending on your operator consumable costs (hairnets, beardnets, bandages, disposable uniforms, etc) I have heard of some places that instituted a vending machine that is coded to an employee number so that operators can only take a set number of those items from the company at a time such as one hairnet a day.  If they require more they have to go to their supervisor and request another one.

 

this helps with bandages and such for tracking, if you track them, and to make sure people aren't taking them home and to reduce waste.

[mruth84]

It is a bit labor intensive, but you can do a process capability study on your filling equipment to ensure you are not overfilling your container.  I am currently working on this.