Insights — Container Glass Operations & Digitalisation

Insights

Ideas from the floor, written for the floor.

Practical notes on hot end operations, digitalization, changeovers, and what we see working (and not) across container glass plants worldwide.

Featured

Container Glass Job Change Time Reduction: A SMED Guide

Cutting job change time by 40–60% in a container glass plant is achievable. Here is how SMED discipline and the 9-stage Job Change Lifecycle make it happen.

23 May 2026 5 min readZaid Hassoneh

Glass bottles flowing on a production line

Container glass bottles staged on a pack line

Independent operational diligence for a container glass acquisition

What a data room does not tell you about a glass plant — and how we add floor-level reality to M&A due diligence.

1 May 2026 7m

IS machine line in a container glass plant

Operational excellence that survives a bad shift

Most OpEx programmes die the first time production is behind and tempers are short. Here's how to design one that doesn't.

1 May 2026 8m

OEE in a glass plant: what to actually measure — and what not to

OEE is abused almost as often as it is useful. Here's how we decompose it for container glass, and the three traps we see most often in practice.

1 May 2026 7m

Molten glass being formed at the hot end

Forehearth optimisation: a practical guide for plant managers

Forehearth is the dullest system on the hot end and the one that most decides your defect rate. Here's what we look at, in what order.

1 May 2026 7m

First-hour yield: the KPI most glass plants do not measure

First-hour yield is the difference between a changeover you can be proud of and one that looks good on a report. Here's how to measure and improve it.

1 May 2026 6m

Retiring the last spreadsheet: a pragmatic path to glass plant digitalisation

Most digital transformations fail at the spreadsheet handover. Here is what works — role-based dashboards, existing data, no rip-and-replace.

1 May 2026 7m

Sub-six-hour job change in container glass: what it actually takes

SMED adapted for container glass — how to get from 14–18 hour changeovers to a choreographed six-hour dance without sacrificing first-hour yield.

1 May 2026 8m

A practical hot end optimisation checklist for container glass plants

The diagnostic we actually run when we walk onto a forming floor — forming, forehearth, line coordination, and the data questions that expose root causes.

1 May 2026 9m

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