I should point out that "pies" in the UK is a rather generic term. MBOs (mince beef and onion), sausage rolls, pasties, pork pies and quiche was made in this south Devon based factory, near Plymouth.
It was a good corp citizen thing to attend the 1100 "taste panel" which was part of the quality process. Obviously Product Dev, QA and the line crews could not mark their own work so office staff were expected to taste to standard. The idea is that you taste samples from the store that is post bake. This is a perishable product and there are stores (freezers, chills etc) to provide time buffers throughout production.
There are a lot of constraints. You always make to forecast. In this case, back then, you had to deliver to depot with seven plus days of shelf life. The product needs meat and dough prep, make, bake and wrap and shoving in the back of a trunker (lorry/truck). You need to ensure you've got all your raw ingredients available and most of those have a shelf life and somewhere to store. Your machines have a nominal 100% production rate and a defined servicing period, expected breakdown rate, need cleaning and more. Some machines will do the job end to end and some will only do part of the process. You have bakeries and stores with varying characteristics. Some products have special requirements.
It is clearly a "simple" job of defining, understanding and controlling your constraints and solving a few equations. I absolutely loved it as a challenge. This was 1995ish. I inherited a System 36 that was basically a glorified accounting system with some stock control and a few other things. If it got too warm in summer I used to put bags of solid CO2 that I could scrounge from Despatch (the whole factory panics when it gets really hot) in it.
I helped to sell System 36s (the big ones that took half a room) back in early 1980s.
I remember one demo when a potential customer asked "If it's this slow with one user how slow is it with six?"
The person doing the demo "improvised" with "It's dynamic load time balancing." Which I'd never heard of before. Turns out neither had anyone else involved with the System 36.
I later came across a whole insurance company that was run on a S/36. It was replaced by a single 386 PC.
I had to tickle one of the fans to get it started otherwise the bloody thing would shut down about 40 mins after IPL started. One summer we put bags of solid CO2 in it to keep under the temp threshold.
I still giggle hysterically when someone deploys the "enterprise" keyword at me.
There are always the unenlightened. One day they shall see the light (or a bloody great steak and ale pie) and they shall wipe their mouths in righteousness.
