The Cause of Low Productivity of Japanese Food Manufacturing Industry is Low Real Utilization Rate

Abstract

　The productivity of Japanese food manufacturing industry is only about 60% of manufacturing average. The actual occupancy rate, which is the ratio of the actual operation time to the whole operation time, is also 60 to 70% which is comparable to the productivity ratio to the manufacturing average. In other words, the food factory has low productivity due to the short operating time relative to the operation time. Until now, the cause of low productivity in the food manufacturing industry has been thought to be in the multi-item small-sized production, delay in the expansion factory scale and the automation, but the production characteristics of the food factory such as pulsating flow production by batch production, equipment structure such as oven．The effect of line stoppage caused by inefficient production schedule, individual complete work, cleaning, Washing, sterilization etc. is large. In addition, we can’t ignore the influence of the factory entrance sanitary routine, delivery shortage penalty and slow ordering time distribution etc. Improving the actual utilization rate is the key to improving productivity of food factories.