Application of process improvement in a food business: Example of an ice cream factory

Nowadays, businesses need to manage their business processes in order to survive in a competitive environment and continue to grow. Businesses that succeed in managing their processes correctly can use time and resources effectively to increase efficiency while reducing costs. However, they are able to realize the problems in the business process more quickly and to carry out improvement works to remove the problems. It is also crucial for businesses to choose methods that are appropriate to their current processes in order to be able to improve their problems. By finding problems and developing alternative solutions in this way, they can provide better, more accurate, and less costly improvements. In this study, improvement process was applied to an ice cream manufacturing operation by using the process improvement methods in the literature. All phases of the business process of the business are examined and the current situation analysis is done. Problems were identified after the analysis and appropriate methods were selected to solve the problems. As a result of the application, basic problems were identified and workmanship errors, cleaning and hygiene, factory layout solutions were produced. While some of the solutions produced have been passed on to life and provided important improvements in a short period of time, some of the suggestions have been evaluated by taking into account the medium term objectives of the operator. Keywords: Process improvement, process improvement methods, manufacture of ıce cream