John Peter Koss

The innocence of the beverage container is soon lost when making analyses and evaluations about how and what impacts it creates throughout the entire supply chain.

The beverage industry, along with electronics, textiles and food, is very volatile in terms of creating and maintaining an infrastructure that has flexibility in capacity and the capability to meet consumer demands on a periodic and sometimes instantaneous basis.

Consumer products historically have required some type of date/time identification for a number of reasons including production dates, production schedules, inventory controls, distribution planning and regulatory compliance.

The supply chain always is a topic of conversation because virtually every industrial operation machine designer constantly is attempting to thoroughly understand operating conditions and create the most efficient, timely and economical manufacturing environment that can be used for converting raw materials into product, producing packaged products and delivering finished products to the consumer. This is especially true in all segments of the beverage industry.

Today’s industrial environment is filled with ways to increase profit, meet challenges of competition, improve market share, reduce operating costs, and manage state-of-the-art production and distribution facilities throughout the supply chain.

Across the total beverage spectrum, the results in volume, market share and profit have been less than desirable for the past three to five years at least. Many factors have affected increases and decreases; however, the cost of producing a case of sellable beverages for the market begs a major question: what is the total production cost for each case?

An overall view of the beverage arena immediately highlights the fact that beverage packaging is dominated by logistics: moving materials in some form or another from point A to point B and beyond.

Observations, special studies and compliance evaluations have led to the conclusion that the filling machine is the kingpin of practically every beverage production/packaging line in any segment of the industry. Visits to wineries, distilleries, breweries, soft drink facilities, as well as juice, water and specialty beverage facilities, have provided substantial evidence that many portions of the supply chain are affected by the filler at the production source.

The interpretations of the word “automation” have had many variations with broad scopes of intention. What is automation and what does it mean to beverage operators?

Which beverage package will consumers buy, under what conditions, when will they buy, how many will they buy and why will a purchase occur? These types of challenging questions confront most sales and marketing managers as they attempt to maximize sales and profit under many variable conditions.