Improvement Support for Small and Medium-sized Food Factories by the Cross-industry Collaboration Team Method

Small and medium-sized food factories often have problems — not only in the area of “manufacturing,” such as limited automation, heavy reliance on manual labor, and production losses, but also in “integrated manufacturing and sales,” including order and delivery management, materials, personnel and equipment management, as well as manufacturing planning and execution, and so forth. In addition, they have significant issues in “product development,” such as responding to customer needs and enhancing brand strength. Given these circumstances, there is a pressing need for public support organizations to address the problems across these three core factory activities — “manufacturing”, “integrated manufacturing and sales”, and “product development” — from a holistic perspective. However, comprehensive support addressing all three domains in an integrated manner appears limited. To solve these problems, the Technical Research Institute of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Machine Industry has developed the Cross-Industry Collaboration Team Method. This approach provides team-based consulting by specialists in the fields of “manufacturing”, “integrated manufacturing and sales”, and “product development”. The team includes experts from universities, academic societies, professional organizations, public research institutes, engineering consultancies, food machinery manufacturers, and manufacturing sectors not yet engaged in food machinery. The method supports the continuous improvement of small and medium-sized food factories while creating new business opportunities for food machinery makers and related industries. This paper outlines the challenges facing small and medium-sized food factories, explains the Cross-Industry Collaboration Team Method, and reports on verification experiments assessing its effectiveness.