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Industry

Confectionery

Where SKU complexity + tight changeover windows + thin margins meet.

Confectionery production runs hundreds of SKUs through a handful of lines with substantial changeover penalties. The combinatorial space is too large for spreadsheets and too constrained for off-the-shelf APS. KPT mathematically models the variables, finds sequences and load-balance decisions a planner would miss, and integrates with your existing SAP / MES setup -- no customization required.

Live deployment Perfetti Van Melle -- Lainate, Italy

How KPT helps

A decision-support layer for confectionery planners.

Confectionery is a discrete-batch industry with continuous-process DNA: hundreds of finished SKUs, dozens of raw materials, multiple production lines, and changeover penalties that compound across the week. KPT's optimizer attacks the planning surface from three directions at once:

  • Sequence each line's batches to minimize aggregate changeover.
  • Balance load across lines when multiple can run an order.
  • Surface the OEE losses worth recovering, ranked by dollars.

All recommendations flow through a planner-approval UI. No write-back to SAP / MES happens without explicit human sign-off. Shadow-run trust gates A/B-test every variable for 30 days before promotion.

Specific outcomes KPT delivers

  • Scheduling for Production Lines

    Up to 12% reduction in changeover loss across the planning horizon.

  • Changeover-Sequence Minimizer

    Order SKU transitions to minimize aggregate setup loss.

  • Multi-Line Load Balancer

    When an order can run on multiple lines, pick the one minimizing total cost-to-serve.

  • OEE Loss Decomposer

    Auto-attribute every minute of OEE loss to a recoverable-dollars cause.

Where to start

A 2-week PoC on a single line, with full read-only deployment + a planner-approved-only write path. Currently deployed at Perfetti Van Melle's Lainate plant on 3 production lines.

Confectionery PoC

2 weeks to a live PoC.

One production line. One measurable KPI. A 2-week assessment, a shadow-run validation, and measured impact in dollars. That's how PVM started — and it's how every confectionery engagement starts.