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Operations Management and Process Analysis
How process analysis contributes to the business success of a leading coffee company
In this consulting project, I introduced operations management, its goals, and its concerns to the CEO of one of the worldwide leading coffee companies. I advised the CEO on the tools and concepts of process analysis. I analysed core topics in process analysis including bottlenecks, cycle time, capacity analysis, and throughput.
The CEO of one of the worldwide leading coffee companies expanded her business from Singapore to Los Angeles, but with a freshly brewed coffee twist. The business was a huge success and now operates a chain across Los Angeles. But she was aware that the Torrefacto process would soon struggle to keep up with demand.
Torrefacto refers to a process of roasting coffee beans that involves adding sugar during roasting to glaze the beans. The additional sugar increases the effects of the Maillard Reaction, thus giving the beans more of their distinct flavour. Moreover, coffee is one of the commodities whose price has experienced a significant increase along with huge volatility in the world markets. It is therefore crucial for the CEO to improve the performance of Torrefacto process (see below).
The process consists of three steps: (1) blending of different coffee beans followed by roasting of the blend, and (2) finally grinding and (3) packing. The CEO plans to have three extremely reliable continuous processing machines for the three steps. To ensure the freshness of coffee, at no point in the process can one build work-in-process inventory. The performance of the individual processing machines is described below.
The good news was that the CEO had me available to advise her with the…
