Brewery Supplychain Reserach

[BensingBrewery]

Hello all,

I am currently working on a Dual Masters Degree and my thesis is on Brewery Logistics and Operations Management. I have some questions that I will like to ask anyone who manages the supply chain and production in your brewery. Throughout the next couple months, I will be posting various questions as part of a primary research effort to provide evidence for my thesis.

Here are the first ones:

Do you operate on a push or pull supply chain?

If you operate on a pull system, can you give me a brief (or long if you would like) description of your logistics system?

If you operate on a push system, can you give me a brief description of your demand forecasting and inventory management?

Thank you for your time and responses!

Bill Bensing

[liammckenna]

Bill,

How about a combination? Here's my thinking...

We are a brewpub ~1500 hL/year, brew 4 products on a regular basis with a seasonal fifth.

All of our products go into kegs firstly. Production forecasting is based on historical demand patterns. More immediate inventory levels may augment production schedules previously built from these historical patterns.

The push-pull boundary for us is the bottling machine. We bottle beer from previously packaged kegs in immediate response to retailer demand. We do maintain a small inventory of bottles of each product but daily production of bottles is based on retailer demand. I would have to say bottles are pull and kegs are push.

Maybe I'm not understanding. (or perhaps my aging brain has misremembered my supply chain management stuff)

Happy to clarify with some guidance.


Good luck.

Pax.

Liam

[BensingBrewery]

Liam,

Thank You and you are correct with your response.

A push production system is one where a products are produced and then put into the market. Here they will either sit as inventory until sold. When they don't sell, companies discount and ect. to move the products out of inventory. The best way to look at push production is The company decides how much to produce of each product.

A pull production system is quite the opposite. Instead of the company producing a specific quantity and "pushing" it out into the market, the company produces as the market demands the product. Here The market decides how much to produce of each product.

In a push production system, companies will have a greater amount of inventory and Work In Process (WIP) to handle the fluctuating demands of the consumers. In a pull production system, inventory and WIP are reduced to what is referred to as the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ). This EOQ is the least specific amount of inventory that reduces total procurement and inventory costs.

Has anyone attempted to use a push system for their keg float?

Salut!

Bill