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The food and beverage industry in Australia is growing at a rapid rate as we continue to build food processing plants, distribution facilities and retail outlets to feed a growing local and global population. The food industry faces several challenges associated with supply chain management across retail, distribution and processing, regulatory requirements and price pressure.
As the industry grows there is increasing demand on the food and beverage industry players to deliver in several different areas:
On time in full delivery
EDI integration to major retailers
HACCP assistance
Traceability
Allergen management
On time in full delivery
Supply chain
Traceability
EDI integration to major retailers
HACCP assistance
Allergen management
Weigh scale integration
Manufacturing management
Expiry dates and lot traceability
Inventory management
Supply chain
These multiple touchpoints can provide opportunity or pain for any food and beverage supplier – in food processing and/or food and beverage distribution. By addressing these challenges a food and beverage processing or distribution company can get ahead of the competition by:
Functionality to assist with regulatory requirements (for example HACCP)
Freeing up cash flow (by holding the correct inventory levels and improving the quote to cash cycle)
Providing better customer service (through on time in full delivery)
Keeping staff members happier by providing them with the tools to do their job better, easier and quicker (with an easy to use interface, mobility and workflow).
Leverage Technologies has successfully been helping food and beverage customers across Australia run their businesses better.
Any business considering an ERP solution will usually have a reason or a number of reasons for going to market for ERP. These “reasons for going to market” are considered “pain points”. Let’s explore these pain points in more detail as they relate to the food and beverage industry. Let’s also discuss how ERP solutions for food and beverage can address these challenges.
Whilst we will focus on the operational aspects of ERP for food processing industry it is worth noting that you should implement a complete business management (ERP) solution. This means that your food and beverage ERP solution should offer all the functionality that a customer might require:
Financials – including financial and tax reporting
Supplier and raw materials management
Sales
Manufacturing (including manufacturing planning / scheduling)
Food industry specific requirements
Proof of delivery
Purchasing and purchase planning
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
Inventory control and warehouse management
Mobility (get the information that you want, when you want it)
Reporting, analytics, business intelligence and dashboards
HACCP Australia looks to provide the world’s best standards and practice for the food and beverage industry. HACCP helps identify and manage risk in food safety through programs, education and solutions. A Food and Beverage processing or distribution company in Australia will be required to be HACCP certified. This is where there is a major requirement from the ERP solution provider to give assistance with reporting and solutions to manage HACCP requirements. These requirements will include:
We touched on this requirement when we mentioned HACCP (above). The requirement for traceability in the food and beverage industry usually relies on full batch/lot traceability. This includes traceability of raw materials and finished product.
If you are processing or distributing food and beverage products you will, without doubt, be delivering the end product to customers. Very often these customers are broken into two broad categories – large retail (requires EDI) and smaller cafes, restaurants and specialist stores (require electronic POD). The pain point here is that multiple pieces of paper floating about in a truck or an old book with signatures scribbled on the paper-based POD is not what you are looking for. Go with an electronic POD integrated into your ERP solution for fast, efficient proof of delivery.
Compliance is key in Australia and requires the declaration of certain substances and products on-package labelling.
The actual weight of the finished item is variable. An item might be sold as a carton and a carton could weigh anything from 2KGs to 2.1KGS – producing a variable weight per carton sold.
At the heart of every stock movement in the food and beverage industry is the requirement for quality management. This includes checking batches of raw materials as they arrive into the warehouse and completing sample checking of finished goods before they are shipped.
If you are trading with the major retailers in Australia, you will require EDI integration. This EDI integration will be used to automate the selling and fulfilment process. EDI will include document flows to and from your ERP solution (PO’s, ASNs etc.). An integrated EDI solution will provide a seamless workflow between the retailer and your business.
As part of your HACCP accreditation, you will be required to show that, in the unlikely event of a product recall your ERP solution can provide backwards and forwards traceability. This will be required to show not only which products are directly involved in a product recall but what other items might be affected. For example, what raw materials might have caused the issue and where else where these raw materials used?
Food products are somewhat unique in that they can be sold in packs and by weight. This can cause a major headache for ERP providers. Weighing scale integration becomes important for managing and checking raw material quantities used in recipes and finished goods about to be shipped. Weighing scale integration to ERP provides another checkpoint to ensure accuracy.
Another aspect of regulation requires product lifecycle management in the food industry to monitor changes in a bill of materials or recipe. Think of the challenges associated with labelling all ingredients, allergens and composition of products.
Another food industry requirement for processing/manufacturing whereby you need to process manufacturing in a particular order to minimise clean and set-up times on each manufacturing workstation. For example, if you manufacture yogurt you might need to process your planning in a particular order – vanilla before strawberry to avoid additional cleaning and machine set-up times.
Interested in finding out more about SAP, Sage and MYOB ERP for food processing industry? Please give us permission to contact you by completing the “Contact us” form and the friendly team at Leverage Technologies will give you a call to discuss your requirements – EDI, WMS, HACCP, transport management, inventory control, business intelligence and more.
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