PROCESSES

The process of manufacturing happiness

HCCB’s factories are the source of the consistent great taste you have been enjoying for decades now. These factories ensure the quality and consistency in the beverages you consume. And because this is a huge responsibility, the factories are set up with the utmost care and precaution with a lot of planning put behind the setting up.

The factories are planned and set up keeping an end-to-end balance in mind. It begins right from the demand, transportation and distribution to the procurement, storage, manufacturing and supply.

Before a factory is set up, thorough research and assessment of the area is done. This involves checking the availability of resources like land, water, labour among other factors.

The Planning Process:

Planning is done in order to ensure there is minimum disruption and maximum optimisation of resources. The factories are set up with complete adherence to government laws to protect the resources and the people in the vicinity.

The process of setting up factories is uniform everywhere and meets certain key criteria:

Infrastructure Optimisation:

Utilising the existing assets and resources to the best possible ability

Common Infrastructure Planning:

Increasing the capacity by using the best and most advanced scientific tools and technology

Optimum Cost:

To do all this while leveraging the scale at the best possible cost.

The Execution Process:

It is not just the setting up of the factory that is done in a sustainable manner. The operations at the manufacturing plant too, are carried out in a way to ensure sustainability. There are constant innovations at the factories to save and utilise resources better.

Some of the best examples of these sustainable innovations are such:

Lightweighting:

One of the most prominent and recognised initiatives by HCCB, lightweighting is an effort to reduce the Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) content used in the packages.

ErgoBloc:

Everything from the cleaning of the preform, to its shaping into the bottle, and finally the filling of the beverage, happens in the ErgoBloc. As a result, the technology helped save a lot of time, energy and resources.

Solar-Powered factories:

Several of Hindustan Coca-Cola’s factories are solar powered. The setting up of such factories reduces the use of fossil fuels and increases the use of sustainable sources of energy.

The Social Impact:

Since the factories are also a source of employment and opportunity for those living around them, their setting up additionally involves understanding the needs of the people in the surrounding area, eventually helping them live a better lifestyle. This setup has a strong positive impact on the society and communities in the areas close by as well.

HCCB understands the most pressing needs of the area and community as well as the issues hampering the quality of life. It then does an assessment and helps provide basic facilities like sanitation services, potable water, education, and skill building to help the community, especially women, earn a livelihood through different means.

HCCB factories employ thousands of people, complies completely with the government norms and social rights, and even tries to go beyond, to achieve more than what is promised. They contribute to several stakeholders across sectors like farming, supplying, manufacturing, retail, and transportation among others.

Process checks that ensure the quality for your drinks

From packaging and bottling to beverage-level quality checks, HCCB follows a comprehensive process that involves minimal human intervention through its production procedure.

Here are five key in-process quality checks across different lines that you as a consumer must know about.

• Bottle Inspectors - Online quality inspection processes include the scrutiny of cleaned glass bottles for any damage and foreign matter, which is done with Electronic Bottle Inspection technology. After the cleaning of the glass bottles, these instruments are placed to detect breakage or foreign matter in the bottles without human intervention. This electronic inspection technology rules out virtually any possibility of foreign matter, of any kind, being present in a bottle.
• Filled Bottle Inspection Technology- Filled Bottle Inspection technology measures and ensures the uniformity of net content (liquid) in all bottles through a liquid height parameter. Next, it checks for the closure condition –ensuring the cap is placed properly.
• COBRIX Analyser -The COBRIX analyser ensures the same quantity of solid (sugar) and CO2 level in all the thousands of bottles which are packaged every day, and also ensures that the quantity levels are maintained within specification limits. If you are sugar conscious, this process acts as the guarantor.
• Flow Diverter Valve- In case of juice production, the Flow Diverter Valve ensures that the hot fill product (juice) is pasteurised at a pre-set temperature. If the beverage happens to go below the desired temperature, it is not passed on to the filler and is sent for re-pasteurisation. Hence, nothing but the best quality is packaged for you.
• Interlocks -Several robust interlocks are placed in the processing and manufacturing line to ensure that the product quality criteria are met at every step. If at any stage the criteria are not met, the interlocks get applied so that the process is halted immediately. One critical interlock is placed in the date-coding machine, which pauses the process instantly on recording any aberrations in it. The interlock is applied to ensure the process halts immediately.

Clearly, multiple process checks ensure nothing can go wrong for your favourite drinks.

How does the door to happiness get unlocked?

A fridge in time serves nine may just be the most appropriate edit to the long-standing proverb, in HCCB's context.

A well-kept visicooler with products organised as per a defined plan, goes a long way in serving them chilled, to the consumers. In any case, a sparkling drink is best served at 4°C.

But have we ever wondered how these visicoolers get placed at the precise retailing / eating location, given that there are more than 20 lakh retailers who do business with HCCB.

Here is the backstory of how it all happens:

An internal knowledge-processing center and a team of Operations experts use the Lean Six Sigma-DMAIC methodology, to maintain service standards and pre-defined SLEs.

• Automated processes automatically allocates the request for placement of new coolers, with the nearest supplier / vendor of those visicoolers.
• In parallel, an automated outgoing phone call responds to the retailer's request within 1 working day, confirming / denying the request
• The automated software uses the first come-first serve basis, for addressing the retailer's requests to get a visicooler
• A query management system, developed through the Service Management Tool (Salesforce.com), addresses any customer queries in quick time, that may arise in the interim
• Retailers / owners submit the relevant documents including KYC – online, thereby making the process of verification, rapid
• CTS Authorization gets done on the basis of the uploaded scanned documents in the CTS tool, instead of hard copies
• Physical assets (visicoolers) are now ready to be shipped and installed at the consumption points