Investigation of production bottlenecks and productivity analysis in soft drink industry: a case study of East Africa Bottling Share Company

Nowadays the struggle to survive in a global market competition has become threatening. Even though productivity in the industrial sector plays a significant role in a sector’s ability to compete in this competitive environment. However, the poor production capacity of manufacturing companies in Africa significantly contributes to the African countries’ low economic growth. The existence of bottlenecks in a manufacturing system may have a detrimental effect. However, production bottlenecks are un-inventable; they can be a key ingredient to enhance the productivity and profitability of the entire production. In this research work, production bottlenecks have been examined and an appropriate bottleneck identification and controlling strategy for the soft drink industries was proposed by conducting a case study in the Addis Ababa plant of East Africa Bottling Share Company(EABSC). The theory of constraints (TOC) was used as the primary tool to identify and remove production bottlenecks. Line performance analysis has been done using overall equipment efficiency (OEE) to understand the current operational condition of the line. Different bottleneck identification approach has been implemented in the analysis and a focus improvement area has been identified. A line simulation model has also been developed for existing and modified production lines using Arena-simulation software to evaluate line improvement. As a result, productivity has been enhanced by 15% and production loss has been reduced by 4.7% after implementing the proposed line improvement strategy.