Question

HOW BEER IS MADE

The beer making process is an art. It takes time, patience and quite a bit of experimentation to find that perfect flavour. Once you’ve found the right mix, you can replicate it again and again to ensure that you’re always delivering the same quality product that consumers come to expect from you. The following is a summary of SAB beer brewing process.

Creating The Malt

The first step in the beer making process is to create the malt from barley.

• Grains are steeped for 1 – 2 days
• They’re then cooled in humid air so that they can germinate for 3 – 7 days
• Grains are then dried in a kiln for 1 – 7 days
• A rest period for a minimum of 3 weeks then follows before the grains become malt.

This is then relocated to the brewhouse. The malt is added to mash tuns and heated for 2 – 3 hours. From here it goes to the lauter tuns where the malt grains are processed. This converts the malt into a liquid called wort that’s sieved by the lauter tun and then sent to the wort kettle to be boiled. During this process wort is separated from grain in a process that takes about 2.5 – 4 hours. What’s left is grain that is sent to local farmers and used as cattle feed.

Fermentation

The wort is then sent to the fermenting cellar and placed into fermentation vessels, which hold hundreds of thousands of litres of liquid. The fermentation process takes between 18 and 28 days.

Bottle Preparation

In the interim, bottles are being prepared to receive the liquid. Between 42 000 and 45 000 bottles can be prepared per hour. These are then inspected for cleanliness and quality. If any of the bottles are not fit from a quality perspective, a PVI machine or bottle inspector will pick it up and send them back to the washing process.

Filling Up and Sealing

Once the bottles are ready and beer has fermented to the right degree, the last few steps take place. A production line labels the beer bottles – 1 500 bottles can be labelled per minute. The bottles are also filled before three concurrent checks take place:

• The fill height is correct
• The labels have been put on straight
• A tap tone is conducted – a test that makes sure the bottle caps have been securely attached and fastened.

Load ‘Em Up

The beers are packed into crates and loaded onto the SAB trucks for secure delivery to traders who can then sell the beer.

Question 1

1.4 How can SAB apply Lean layout in their business.                                                          (8)

Answer 1

For a lean layout of a business, we need to create a seamless flow of material, manpower, and information. For applying lean layout to their business, SAB first needs to find and eliminate the following wastes from their current layout:

• Over-production: SAB’s beer-making process stretches over many days times, and thus it is easy for them to fall prey to over-production on stages that are time-consuming. Moreover, there are multiple stages that their raw material goes through to turn into the beer they can market, hence, they need to be wary of long set-up times, reduce them.
• Over-processing: SAB should identify if they are using complicated storage systems in the name of advanced systems, and replace them with simpler systems to ensure time and cost savings.
• Movement: there is a lot of material movement in the Beer making process, hence, material and tools required in the process need to be stored as close to the point of use as possible. SAB should standardize their material and tool layout to avoid unnecessary material movement.
• Inventory: due to the complex nature of the process, it is easier to manage the process by producing before the product is actually needed in the process, to develop a cushion in case of faults or failures. SAB needs to identify and eliminate such activities and ensure hand to mouth feeding to all its steps to ensure minimal WIP and cost. Here, the material availability also needs to be factored into decision making.
• Waiting: complex layouts often lead to delays in material supplies. Proper inter-process communication, optimal set-up times, hand to mouth supplies, can help SAB to curb excessive waiting waste.
• Defects: SAB should also focus on reducing its defects, be it on the bottling stage or in any of the previous stages.
• Handling & Transportation: extra handling, long distances between workstations, and blocked pathways should be eliminated where possible.

Once wastes are identified and eliminated (it is an ongoing process), SAB needs to focus on its facility layout. It is the key component in a lean layout application. To apply Lean layout, SAB needs to:

• Enable FIFO (first in first out) system at the batch level.
• Reduce WIP and inventory throughout the process.
• Identify and work on bottlenecks in the process.
• Create transparency in the process, lead time, inventory levels, and quality.
• Balance production line. For example, a line can label 1500 bottles per minute while bottle preparation can be done at a rate of 42000 to 45000 bottles per hour (i.e. an average of 725 bottles/min). hence, two lines for bottle preparation are needed to feed the labeling line to ensure smooth balanced production flow.
• Improve their resource planning, forecasting, and utilization.
• Use root cause analysis to eliminate defects and problem-solving.
• Develop an open culture, from top to bottom in the organization, that promotes problem-solving over finger-pointing.