MIT SCM Symposium 2024

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics states that food and beverage manufacturers have experienced annual 0.5% decreases in labor productivity and annual 7% increases in unit labor costs since 2019 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023). These statistics underscore a growing inefficiency in the manufacturing and distribution processes of food products, posing significant challenges to industry players. Our sponsor, a Fortune 500 food manufacturer, illustrates these challenges in their product repackaging operations. Repackaging operations involve the meticulous case-packing of finished goods tailored to the specifications of end customers, typically retailers. The sponsor's product repackaging operation is costly, unscalable, and labor-intensive. Our research aims to assist our sponsor company by exploring the use of robotic systems to perform the product repackaging operation. Our methodology involved defining scope of the capstone, mapping processes, collecting and processing data, building a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model and conducting scenario analysis to measure cost implications in various supply chain network design scenarios.