Check your cafeteria location to make sure it's convenient for most employees. You may save valuable production minutes with a change.

Spread your vacation period over the widest possible span of time or shut the plant down for two weeks. This will cut the expense of vacation replacements. And with the shutdown method there will be no argument as to who gets the choice vacation dates.

Also make sure you have reasonable requirements as to hours worked before a production employee is entitled to a vacation. You might try providing standard vacation time off but make the vacation pay depend on the number of hours worked in the previous year.