Production Planning, Costing, and Workplace Documentation
This domain tests the commercial and record-keeping side of the craft: scheduling batches sensibly, costing a product from the recipe, and keeping documents that survive an audit.
Core rules
- Scheduling: sequence allergen-containing runs after allergen-free runs where possible, group same-colour and same-flavour products to reduce changeover, and plan around cook and cooling times rather than machine start times. Changeover time is a real cost.
- Capacity: a line's output is limited by the slowest step - depositor, cooling tunnel or wrapper - so plan to the constraint.
- Costing: cost from the recipe on an as-used basis (glucose syrup solids, not syrup weight, for solids calculations), then divide by saleable yield, not input weight. Add packaging, direct labour, energy and overhead. Report cost per kg and per unit, plus contribution margin.
- Variance: standard cost versus actual cost; investigate yield loss, overfill, rework and giveaway.
- Documentation: batch records, CCP logs, calibration logs, deviation and CAPA records, specifications, SOPs, certificates of analysis, retention samples and training records. Apply ALCOA - attributable, legible, contemporaneous, original, accurate. Corrections are single-line, signed, dated and explained.
Worked example
A 100 kg input batch contains sugar 45 kg at 0.60/kg, glucose syrup 35 kg at 0.90/kg, water 18 kg and fat 2 kg at 4.00/kg.
- Ingredient cost: 27.00 + 31.50 + 0 + 8.00 = 66.50.
- Yield is 92 kg saleable, so cost per kg = 66.50 ÷ 92 = 0.723/kg.
- Add packaging at 0.10/kg and labour at 0.08/kg → 0.903/kg. Reasoning: dividing by the 100 kg input would understate cost by about 8 % and hide the yield loss.
Traps
- Costing on input weight instead of saleable yield.
- Back-dating or pre-signing a CCP log.
- Using correction fluid or overwriting instead of a single-line correction.
- Ignoring changeover and cleaning time when quoting a delivery date.