How do you manage the planning and scheduling of brewing and packaging operations? I work for Craft Brew Alliance doing production planning and I'm very interested in how other breweries manage their production planning.

Here are a few of the issues that we experience:

*Production and stocking policies for new product introductions

*Spikes in demand due to near-in chain programs

*Data inconsistency, especially with inventory information in our warehouse - hard to know how much to make when you don't know what you have

*General variability in shipping/sales forecast

If anyone has any insight on how to deal with these challenges, I would love to hear your perspective, even if you don't think you have the best solution.

-Gavin Johnson, Craft Brew Alliance