For better understanding of Industries, IMS university courses campus conducted an Industrial visit to Yakult Danone India Pvt Ltd. on 26th of February 2018 for its PG course MIB. It?s the only Yakult manufacturing plant all over India. Students were nicely greeted by the staff members at plant .Students were taken to the factory where they were able to know several things about the industry like process of manufacturing yakult, its history and other various information. The plant?s machinery and technology is fully automatic and because of this there are only 42 employees in the factory.

Yakult: probiotic fermented milk drink.
The first stage of making yakult is in the seed room, where seeds of LCS (Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota) bacteria are produced in tanks of 160 ltr and then fermented. This process takes around 2-3 days. The second stage is culture mixing room, where skimmed milk powder is added with seed and again fermented and gives the outcome in form of Yakult solution. Then Yakult solution is mixed with chilled water in 50:50 ratios. This process is done in tanks having capacity of 15000 ltr. This whole process again takes around 7-8 days.

The third stage is Quality Control Room, where samples after every step are measured from parameters. The fourth stage is moulding room, where11000 bottles are produced per hour from Resin. The resin is directly bought from Gujarat. There are 2 machines for this process.

The fifth and last stage is filling room, where 3 functions at a time take place
1). Printing
2) filling
3). Capping.

Filling is done through air pressure. This process is also done by 2 separate machines one is re-shrink which does filling of 5 bottles at a time and the second one is multi shrink which does filling of 50 bottles at a time. And then the yakult bottles are ready to be sold.

Some more information was gathered by students:
Yakult was founded by Dr. Minoru Shirotain year 1930.
The first bottle of yakult was sold in japan.
This manufacturing plant in India was set up 2008 which is the only manufacturing plant in India.
Yakult is sold in 3 different quantities 100 ml, 80 ml, and 65 ml. while in India it is sold only in 65 ml and in japan 100 ml.
The warehouse capacity is 5 lac units.
Yakult has its own supply chain.
It is sold in 38 countries where in all countries the design and layout of manufacturing unit is same.
Yakult does batch production and total batch production time takes 13-14 days.
The bacteria LCS is directly imported from Japan.
Each Yakult bottle of 6.5 ml contains 6.5 billion bacteria.
Yakult danone is a 50:50 joint venture of yakult from Japan and danone from France.
The total investment in Sonipat plant is 360 cr.

It was a great learning experience for all students.