White paper

UK Guide Supply Chain Resilience for containerglass

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How cullet, raw materials, demand, and production campaigns work better together

Container glass follows a unique supply chain logic: furnaces operate continuously, cullet and raw materials must be reliably available, and production campaigns require stability. At the same time, demand fluctuates depending on customer segment, season, and market.

This whitepaper shows how container glass manufacturers can better align these requirements and manage their supply chains more robustly.

 

What you'll learn in the whitepaper

  • How to create transparency across cullet, raw materials, and delivery status.
  • How S&OP brings together different demand patterns across beverage, food, pharmaceutical, and perfumery customers.
  • How demand sensing helps identify seasonal peaks, promotions, and short-term changes earlier.
  • How to better align inventory and production campaigns with actual demand.
  • Which KPIs make supply chain resilience and delivery performance measurable.

Download the whitepaper

 Learn how to better synchronize demand, raw material supply, inventory, and production campaigns in the glass container industry. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Supply Chain Resilience in the Glass Container Industry

FAQ

  •  Container glass is produced in continuous production processes: furnaces operate around the clock, production campaigns require stability, and color or product changes involve significant effort. At the same time, demand, raw material availability, and customer priorities can fluctuate at short notice. Resilient planning helps identify such changes earlier and better assess their impact on production and delivery performance. 

  •  Cullet and raw materials must be available in sufficient quantities and at the required quality to ensure production campaigns can run as planned. Shortages, quality deviations, or delayed deliveries can have an immediate impact on the production schedule. Greater transparency regarding availability, delivery status, and material requirements makes it easier to account for risks early in the planning process. 

  •  Demand planning combines historical data with sales insights, seasonal effects, promotions, and other demand signals. This makes changes visible earlier. For container glass manufacturers, this creates more time to align inventory, capacity, and production campaigns with expected demand.

  •  The trade-off cannot be eliminated entirely: production benefits from long, stable campaigns, while customers expect short lead times and high availability. It is therefore critical to plan demand, inventory, capacity, and campaigns together. This allows inventory to be used selectively as a buffer while reducing unnecessary production changeovers.

  •  Sales & Operations Planning creates a common framework for demand, inventory, capacity, and production decisions. Different assumptions from sales, supply chain, and production can be aligned early, making potential bottlenecks or conflicting objectives visible. This provides a stronger basis for cross-site decisions and scenario planning.

  •  Relevant KPIs include forecast accuracy, delivery performance such as OTIF, inventory coverage, the number and duration of production changeovers, planning effort, and response time to deviations. These KPIs should not be viewed in isolation: lower inventory, for example, only represents an improvement if delivery performance and campaign stability are maintained.
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