Ultimate Liquids’ Technology for Responsive, Agile & FLEXible MANUfacturing

In FMCG, manufacturing processes have traditionally been designed to minimise conversion costs and have large production runs with few changeovers, to minimise waste and cleaning effluent. This model has come under increasing pressure, with retailers demanding suppliers like Unilever to be more responsive. To achieve this, radically different approaches are needed, towards flexible and agile manufacturing, where products are only made as and when required. This project aims to develop a new integrated process design concept, which enables a demand driven production schedule. Key is a significant reduction in Minimum Order Quantity without significant reduction in operational efficiencies. The process design that Unilever, with Silverson Machines and University of Manchester, aim to deliver will allow products to be pulled through the value stream quickly and accurately rather than rely on forecasts well ahead of demand & would be completely new for FMCG