Your operation
Only the share that goes into kegs – not total output. The scale stretches the slider without making it longer: 50 to 20,000 hl.
Spread the percentages over the sizes you run – what is meant is the share of the volume filled, not of the number of kegs. The sum does not have to come to exactly 100; the calculation uses the ratios.
From filling until the cleaned keg stands ready to be filled again – storage, transport, standing time at the customer, return transport, cleaning. This is the figure almost nobody knows and it determines everything.
Small containers as a rule stand longer at the customer. Only the sizes you gave a share to above are shown; the slider above then counts as the starting value.
Kegs going to Italy, Scandinavia or overseas are out for months. Calculated separately, they do not distort the average of the rest of the fleet.
What is entered is the volume share, not the number of kegs – how many kegs export ties up is shown in the result.
How far the strongest month lies above the average month. 1.0 means even across the year.
Buffer for inspection, repair, withdrawal and kegs that cannot be found at the moment.
Kegs that do not come back. Gives the replacement purchases, not the base fleet.
Result
- Fills per year–
- Cycles per keg and year–
- of which tied up in export–
- Base need in the average month–
- Uplift for the seasonal peak–
- Safety and reserve stock–
- Fleet size–
- of which per container size
- Replacement purchases per year from losses–
Rounding the result up to whole pallets would be closer to practice – we deliberately do not round here, so that the calculation stays traceable.
What the fleet is made of
Base need, seasonal uplift and reserve in proportion. How far the middle block grows is decided by the season.
The calculation
It is simpler than it looks. A keg can be filled as often in a year as 365 days can be divided by its cycle time. Put the other way round: the longer a keg is out on the road, the more kegs you need for the same amount of beer.
| Step | Calculation |
|---|---|
| Fills per year | per container size: sales in litres × share ÷ capacity, then added up |
| Cycles per keg | 365 ÷ cycle time in days – per container size, where separate times are set |
| Base need | fills ÷ cycles per keg |
| Base need with export | domestic share ÷ domestic cycles + export share ÷ export cycles |
| Seasonal uplift | base need × (peak factor − 1) |
| Reserve | (base need + seasonal uplift) × reserve rate |
| Replacement purchases per year | fleet size × loss rate |
The cycle time is the only figure you can really change.Not sales, and hardly the season. But every week a keg spends less at the customer saves kegs – and does so proportionally.
The cycle time is rarely the one you assume. Most calculations use transport plus standing time – forgotten are the full-goods store before delivery, the wait for a full return load, and the kegs standing at the back at the customer because other brands are still running at the front.
Anyone who wants to know measures it: mark a few dozen kegs, note the filling date and the date they come back in. The result is regularly a surprise. That is exactly what an individual keg marking is for – it turns an estimate into a number.
With a QR code on the keg this becomes routine instead of a project: one scan at filling, one scan on return – the rest writes itself into a table. After that the cycle time is no longer an estimate for the fleet but a solid figure for every single keg. And only then do you also see which kegs eat up the time. What we are working on for this
What this calculation does not cover
- An annual average, not a monthly calculationContainer sizes and their cycle times can now be entered individually, but the calculation works with annual values. If the mix shifts over the year – more 50s in summer, more small containers in winter – an annual average captures that only roughly.
- The structure of the seasonA peak factor is a rough approximation. Anyone serving public festivals or a single big weekend has no peak month but a peak week – and needs considerably more kegs at short notice for those days than this calculation shows. Rental kegs exist for exactly this case.
- Ageing of the fleetA mixed fleet has a share going to maintenance every year. Buy everything at once and you have the problem all at once later.
- Other breweries' kegs in your own returnsAnyone working a lot on an exchange basis regularly has kegs of other breweries in stock. They do not count towards your own fleet, but they take up space.