How to plan your brewery production

Production planning and scheduling is the steps you take to ensure your production process flows with maximum efficiency. It is making sure your orders are fulfilled in the most efficient way, without interruptions, delay, or stress.

To maximize productivity, every brewery needs a sound production plan. However, effective planning is a complex process that covers a wide variety of activities to ensure that raw materials, equipment and human resources are available when and where they are needed.

The importance of production planning is that it gives you knowledge (i.e.what you have, what you need to purchase, when you need it, how long it will take to get it, and much more) and essential information about your business.

It gives you full control over your manufacturing process, and this, in turn, provides you the power to

• stop wasting time

• avoid bottlenecks

• manage your crew effectively and

• make the process flow without stops and troubles.

Does it sound like “efficiency” to you? Because it is!

All manufacturing businesses – from nano, to micro, to macro – have the same goal: to make quality beer with minimal time and resources while keeping the same level quality. Let’s take a step-by-step look at what you need to achieve that.

DEGONG 300L brewery equipment

There are five steps to the production planning process.

1. Forecast Demand

Estimate how much beer you need to produce within a specific time frame. This includes confirmed orders and predicted orders.

There are different methods used for forecasting. You could estimate demand based on historical information (orders placed by customers in the past) or take into account events in your business environment that might alter past patterns (new market trends, stagnant economy, new marketing campaigns, etc.).

2. Determine Production Options

Look at different production options to meet the forecasted demand. Begin by mapping all the steps of your production process, such as using a flowchart.

This will help you examine how to improve process flow by considering bottlenecks. Then determine the resources needed to complete each task involved in your production process. This includes a combination of resources from human resources, machinery and equipment, materials and inventory.

Analyzing these resources will give you a much better look at your production options.

3. Choose The Option That Uses Resources Most Effectively

Compare the cost and time of each production option and choose the one that maximizes the operational capacity of your brewery.

Make sure you can cover costs that are involved, which span the purchase of materials, rent, payment of staff salary, leasing and more. Share the production plan with departments and staff that are relevant to the process.

They can chime in the production process, making operations run smoother.

4. Monitor And Control

To ensure the plan is working as intended, compare what is happening with what should be happening.

This control system should be in place to help you notice problems when they happen, giving you more time to correct issues.

5. Adjust

Be ready to adjust the plan if needed. It should have some flexibility to accommodate changes in customer demand.

The plan should also have a risk mitigation plan if certain risks occur during the production process, such as equipment breaking down, workers getting sick or suppliers not delivering on time.

Production planning is like a roadmap: It helps you know where you are going and how long it will take you to get there. Ask yourself

• how much needs to be produced and by when?

• what is the available capacity?

• how can differences between priorities and capacity be resolved?

As Benjamin Franklin once said: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”

We can work with you to establish what your volumes will be, to work out what size equipment you need – then assess weight requirements and utilise the height and space to design your perfect space.