The role of a production services department in the design of new breweries and expansions.

Sikora, A.J.

Abstract
The beer market in South Africa is currently expanding at an average annual rate of some 13%. Consequently the South African Breweries group of companies has recently been faced with the task of planning and carrying out the establishment of a complete new brewery as well as major expansion of existing facilities. To ensure that these developments would be carried out as efficiently as possible, a new organisation, the Production Services Department, was created within the company. It is staffed by engineers and technical experts on the one hand, and experts in brewing and beer packaging on the other, whose job is to make use of their individual and collective skills and knowledge to provide a specification for the new facility as soon as it is decided to build one, and to supervise the design, construction, equipment installation and preproduction testing in order to ensure that the original requirements have been satisfied. Details are given of the roles played by Production Services personnel in the different stages of project development.
Keywords : brewery construction design engineering equipment management planning