The Application of Late Product Differentiation and other optimizations to air refresher aerosols manufacturing: a Procter & Gamble Case Study

The projects of this thesis project takes place in the context of Procter & Gamble's External Supply Solutions (ESS) department, which deals with P&G items whose production is outsourced to external Contract Manufacturers (CMs). The main project consists of changing the layout and production process of one of the CMs that produces Ambi Pur/Febreze room spray perfumers. These products are sold in different formulations, each with a different scent. The company currently produces one batch of scented formula from scratch, for each batch of finished product. The goal of the project is to change the CM production setup to a late differentiation process. This would mean producing larger batches of a base formula (called White Base) that includes the ingredients common to all finished formulas. The white base could then be used for products of smaller batches of formula. Other two optimization projects for the manufacturing of these air refresher aerosol sprays are covered. One concerns the reduction of the average overfilling per can from three two two grams over the nominal volume. The second is the qualification of the use of shrink sleeve labels on the aerosol cans with the objective of avoid scrapping cans with an error in their artwork or excess cans from variants that are no longer sold.