A busy food production plant doesn’t mean it’s running efficiently.
Most food and beverage plants operate somewhere between 55% and 65% overall equipment effectiveness. But 85% is considered the world benchmark. A production efficiency audit exists to help make up that difference.
The sooner your food manufacturing business undergoes an audit, the sooner you stop paying for waste you can’t see.
Here’s when a production efficiency audit makes sense:
Nothing looks broken, but something’s off. A line can run a full shift without a single stoppage and still lose an hour nobody logs. A changeover takes twelve minutes because it’s always taken twelve minutes, not because anyone checked if it should.
An audit finds that hour. It looks less at the breakdowns and more at the ten minutes on either side of them, where the real cost sits.
Growth feels like it requires more investment. When output falls short of demand, you may feel compelled to ramp up your production line with additional equipment or take on another hire. Unfortunately, additional capacity on top of a broken process costs more to produce the same waste, faster.
An audit finds the capacity already sitting on your floor. Tightening changeovers and cutting rework gets you closer to your growth target for less than a single new hire would cost.
The schedule serves delivery, not profit. A factory can run at full tilt and still work against its own business model. Building schedules around what’s easiest to make, instead of what’s most profitable to sell, erodes margin in a way that’s not obvious on your P&L sheet.
An audit realigns the two, so the plant is producing what actually moves the business forward, not just what’s convenient to run.
Someone outside your business starts asking questions. Whether you’re looking to grow, merge or bring in an outside stakeholder, buyers and investors don’t take your word for it that operations are under control. They expect to see it in the numbers.
An audit gives you that proof before anyone else goes looking for it, and it puts you in the stronger position when those conversations start.
Scrap, stock and yield all point back to one cause. A plant facing these challenges is dealing with one problem showing up in three places on the ledger. Addressing them one at a time means paying to fix the same thing over and over under a different name.
An audit traces all three back to a single starting point, so you’re fixing the cause once instead of patching the same leak three different ways.
Questions we hear before the balance sheet does
How do we know if we need an audit, or if we already know the problem?
If you already know the exact cause, you may just need help fixing it. Most businesses only see the symptom (higher costs or slower output) without a clear line back to the cause, which is what the audit finds.
Will this require us to invest in new equipment?
Not usually. Most efficiency gains come from adjusting how existing people, processes and machines work together.
How disruptive is an audit to daily production?
A well-run audit works around your production schedule, not against it. Expect observation and data review more than hands-on interruption, with minimal impact to your daily output.
What happens after the food production audit is done?
A useful audit ends with a prioritized, practical action plan, so you know exactly what to fix first and what it’s worth to fix it.
Magone & Company’s food industry advisors can help you find where production and profitability are pulling apart, and bring them back together. Schedule your free consultation with a food industry advisor.
This document is for informational purposes only and should not be considered tax or financial advice. Be sure to consult with a knowledgeable financial or legal advisor for guidance specific to your unique circumstances.