ProFood World News: Unilever Engineers Fit a Factory Into a 40-foot Container

Unilever, a multinational consumer goods company, has put together a supply chain team–led by two female engineers–to provide a solution for small volume production. Seasonal variants, market tests before full launch, and responding quickly to changing demand in local markets are not commercially viable to accomplish on mass production lines, as each switchover takes time.

The Unilever supply chain team offered the innovative solution of creating a “nano factory,” a fully-functioning, mini production line that fits entirely into a 40-foot shipping container. It is designed to house everything needed to produce a batch, from the point where raw materials go in at one end to where finished products come out at the other–bottled, capped, and labelled.