Anheuser-Busch InBev meets customer demand by streamlining production.
The world loves a good beer. Annual global consumption has risen for 28 consecutive years to more than 193 billion liters. U.S. craft brewers claim a growing share of this market – in just one year they opened 615 new breweries and increased production by 18%.
Anheuser-Busch InBev has been riding this trend by expanding its offerings beyond its world-famous Budweiser and Bud Light beers to include more than 200 brands.
But producing a greater variety of beers was challenging, and the company noticed its bottom line was being limited by planned downtime activities—such as the start-ups and brand changes necessary to produce all these beverages. And as the number of brands increased, so did these planned downtimes.
Using Minitab to analyze their data, a dedicated team completed a Lean Six Sigma project that not only reduced planned downtime and saved money, but provided a solution the company could roll out globally to multiply the project’s success.