Over the past few years, breweries have been facing a trend towards larger assortments in terms of different bottle shapes or colors as well as different labels or packing units. With more products to be bottled in the same time horizon, changeovers from one product to another are also increasing. Longer overall setup times reduce the availability of the bottling machines which has a direct impact on costs.

The specific planning problem is analyzed and compared to other common planning problems in Operations Research literature. Different categories of algorithms are explored and an algorithm suitable for this planning problem is recommended.

A concept tailored to the specific needs is developed and presented. Additionally, the recommended Tabu Search algorithm is implemented in a proof-of-concept using Java as programming language.