Many manufacturing companies produce hundreds of SKU's at a single facility. This creates inventory and changeover problems. Beef, chicken, seafood, soups and gravies, canned foods, confectioneries, snack foods. In addition to normal manufacturing issues, food processing is often driven by sanitation requirements. Meeting these requirements reduces time available for both production and maintenance activities.
Seasonal demands vary more in food processing than in most other manufacturing environments.
Freshness issues create numerous deadlines that constrain the operation. Not meeting demands means cut orders and lost customers. All of these issues make and efficient and flexible shiftwork operation extremely important. While these types of schedules are ideal for continuous operations, they may fail to meet other scheduling needs of the organization. Safety issues make dedicated training time essential to the safe operation of these plants.