Over the past several years, Food Engineering's annual manufacturing surveys have focused on manufacturing trends. Survey results were used to develop our annual "Manufacturing Trends" and "State of Manufacturing" reports.
Over the past several years, Food Engineering's annual manufacturing surveys have focused on manufacturing trends. Survey results were used to develop our annual "Manufacturing Trends" and "State of Manufacturing" reports. During that time, many of these trends gradually evolved into established manufacturing practices in various plants. So for the year 2000, we revised our annual manufacturing survey to reflect current "best practices" rather than future trends. We asked our Executive Advisory Panel to share with us the manufacturing improvements their plants and companies have achieved over the past five years, and how they achieved these improvements. The results follow.
Veteran panel Food Engineering's Executive Advisory Panel consists of more than 400 food-manufacturing professionals in top management, production management, engineering, quality control, packaging and purchasing across every segment of the industry. This year, 112 panel members contributed to the Best Practices Survey. Most are veterans: Nearly half (48 percent) have 20 or more years of experience in food manufacturing; 36 percent have 10 to 19 years experience. They also represent a cross-section of plant and company size: 34 percent are at locations employing fewer than 100 people; 27 percent are at locations employing 100-499 people; 26 percent at locations with employment exceeding 500. Seventeen percent work at dedicated plants (dedicated to long production runs of the same products with few changeovers); 40 percent at flexible plants (capable of producing several different products on the same lines with frequent changeovers); 36 percent at "hybrid" plants with both dedicated and flexible production lines. Not every respondent answered every question on our comprehensive survey. The percentages shown in the following graphs and tables therefore represent the percentage of respondents answering each question.
Percentages totaling more than 100 percent reflect multiple-choice questions allowing multiple answers.