Five hidden wastage points in a sweets factory

Ask a factory owner about wastage and they will tell you about last month's failed batch. That is the cheapest loss in the building. The expensive ones never appear in any register.

1. Vessel and line residue

Product left clinging to kadhais, trays, mixers and transfer vessels. At two percent of every batch, on a unit doing 500 kg a day, that is 10 kg of finished mithai a day walking out with the wash water.

Measure it: weigh the scrap from one full day of cleaning. The number is usually a shock.

2. Trimming and cutting loss

Sonpapdi edges, barfi trims, uneven slabs. Some of it is reworkable, most of it gets eaten or thrown.

Fix: correct slab thickness and setting, proper cutting frames, and a defined rework route for edges so they go back into the next batch instead of into a bin.

3. Overweight packing

Filling 505 g into a 500 g pack, every pack, all year. One percent giveaway on a lakh packs a month is a lakh rupees of free product.

Fix: calibrated weighing, checkweigher at pack, and a daily giveaway report.

4. Rework that never comes back

Product set aside "for rework" that sits until it is no longer usable. This is the quietest loss of all because it looks like inventory until the day it is written off.

Fix: rework must be consumed within a defined window — usually the next batch of the same product — and it must be logged.

5. Energy and idle time

Fuel burning while a line waits for material. Workers paid while the previous stage clears. Not material waste, but the same rupee.

Fix: production sequencing so no stage waits on another, and staggered start times where a stage genuinely needs lead time.

Start by measuring

You cannot reduce what you do not weigh. Put a scale and a register at each of these five points for two weeks before changing anything. The priority list writes itself.