The food sector has seen several important developments in recent years. First, competition has become fiercer because of the increased market power of food retailing. Secondly, quality legislation has become more stringent due to a growing concern for food safety throughout the society. Third, sustainable production has become more important, and organizations are held responsible for the environmental performance of their production system. In this thesis, several aspects of these developments are studied from an Operations Management perspective. Specific questions that are addressed are: * What are the implications of capacity- and time-constrained intermediate storage on production performance? * What are the performance implications of demand characteristics like high product mix variability and lead time reductions? * How do planning decisions and process configurations influence the realization of product losses The results provide insight in the operational performance of two-stage food production systems with intermediate storage. This performance not only entails competitiveness (through the insights on lead time performance), but also sustainability (through the insight in realization of product losses).