Eliminating production losses in changeover operations: a case study on a major European food manufacturer

With the application of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (AMTs), food manufacturers can operate outside traditional volume-variety diagonal positions without predicted performance penalties. Although produce high-variety and high-volume products with low cost high quality, it is unavoidable that their production processes experience a changeover frequency. Changeovers are not only time-consuming but also accompanied by losses. While literature has emphasized technical technological aspects changeovers, e.g. Single Minute Exchange Dies (SMED), most these studies focussed on flexibility, time, product quality. As manufacturers’ capital-intensive low-profit margins, essential for them to improve efficiency reduce This paper thus aims understand activities, identify key factors influencing losses during changeovers develop mechanism improving overall efficiency. To end, an in-depth case study conducted major European manufacturer. identified nine developed improvement framework three themes (working methods, knowledge management, organizational design).