Meeting the Unique Requirements of the Food & Beverage Industry

Not all ERP solutions are alike. Food and beverage manufacturers have very specific needs around material and process variability, product attributes, dynamic recipe adjustment, multiple units of measure, and shelf-life management.

Traceability Across the Extended Supply Chain

Full backwards and forwards traceability is available by product, raw materials or ingredients, and process. Traceability can be used to record all the changes a product goes through from purchase and receipt, inspection, storage and mixing, all types of processing, testing and packaging through to shipment to the customer. Index has extensive experience of implementing practical traceability solutions using this powerful feature.

Overall Quality Management

Quality control within food needs to handle more variation. The answer will not always be a complete match or mismatch because ranges often apply to variable raw materials and ingredients. Axapta provides the capability for food manufacturers to comprehend these variations, match them against quality specifications and react dynamically as appropriate.

Complex Inventory Management

Food and beverage companies need visibility of their inventory using more than one unit of measure. Products are commonly packed and sold in different sized containers, or even sold by weight or volume ratherthan unit. Dynamics AX provides better visibility into total bulk inventory as well as across the various containers and package configurations. Catch weights can also be handled, simultaneously holding inventory by unit count and actual weight. For example chicken pieces may be priced by weight to account for the variance in size.

Low Cost Manufacturing

Demand and inventory planning are crucial to ensure inventory levels are kept at optimum. Dynamics AX has been designed to help food and beverage manufacturers predict what they are able to sell and when. It then helps them to determine where to make product and which resource to use, and to plan and sequence products correctly. Advanced planning functions allow you to manage and schedule your resources to meet sales demands, providing an accurate, up-to-date overview of your processes and inventories, and revealing where you’re running at over-capacity or under-capacity. This will help you improve internal efficiency and productivity, allowing you to make major cost savings.

Customer Service

Customers are increasingly requiring that suppliers deliver product with shorter lead times and provide more on-demand information and flexibility in how they do business. Dynamics AX nott only provides the tools to manage order fulfilment more effectively, it also has the technology in place to ensure any future demands can be easily met.

Date Tracking For Expiry, Re-test and Distribution

Using batch creation dates and typical shelf life, products can be
carefully managed identifying potential expiry problems.

Comprehensive Recipe Management

Traditional ERP systems for discrete parts define the bill of material, routing and capacity as separate items. In a processing scenario such as food and beverage manufacturing, these elements must be woven together in the context of a recipe or formula. Axapta enables food and beverage manufacturers to define all the resources, materials and
operations that go into producing a product based on a recipe. The recipe brings together process, materials, labour and equipment, into one common entity and process specification.