Like all manufacturers, food and beverage processors are facing the need to cut costs, improve operational efficiency and differentiate their products from the competition. Add to those factors your industry’s unique and specific requirements for product quality and safety, driven by customers and regulatory bodies, in an asset-intensive environment with low margins and high demand variability, and you have the pressure cooker that is your daily work life.
The recent report Achieving Operational Excellence in Food & Beverage, from the U.S. think tank Aberdeen Group, explores these factors in its survey of 170 industry executives on how they are addressing these pressures. Amid the report’s findings is the common theme of the critical nature of tracking and tracing.
As one survey respondent, the CTO at a large soft drink bottler, notes, “to give you some perspective on how important food safety and traceability is to our organization – all cap-ex and op-ex requirements for implementing the needed tools for tracing and tracking product across the supply chain receive an easy ‘green light’ to execute at both the executive and board level.”
That’s huge. Capital expenses and operational expenses can traditionally involve a long, arduous process to get high-level approval – but not, apparently, when it comes to traceability best practices. That’s understandable given the vital role bidirectional tracking plays across the entire supply chain in the food and beverage industry.
Another executive interviewed by Aberdeen Group in 2015 – the CFO at a large food processor – sums it up well when he says, “we’re all just one bad meal away from bankruptcy.” Those are some big stakes at play, underlying the urgent need for processes and systems to keep your company at the top of its game when it comes to food quality and safety.
Technology’s Role in Efficiency Improvements
Technology can be your best friend when it comes to staving off recall or falling consumer confidence – going further, in fact, to drive efficiency throughout your operations and growing profitability. The bane of food and beverage manufacturing can be those manual or paper-based systems that allow for human error, redundancies, and time lags – all hurting the bottom line.
Survey respondents of the 2015 Aberdeen Group report ranked the top benefits of automation of manual internal processes, such as data collection, in the following order:
- Increased visibility
- Reduced operator error
- Reduced response time
- Increased operator efficiency
- Promotion of effective decision making
The Aberdeen Group report points out that enterprise business systems, such as ERP software, go a long way towards creating the needed foundation in process control and automation that food and beverage leaders use to enable the capabilities. One respondent – the vice-president at a large food manufacturer – says “ERP is the foundation for quality management, which includes lot control and traceability…At the supply chain level, tracking product is an integral part of our overall business process.”
It makes sense that as a food or beverage manufacturer, you use business system software that has built-in functionality such as traceability and lot control, created distinctly for food and beverage makers. When the stakes are as high as the safety and quality requirements in your industry, it would be a mistake to consider a ‘one-size-fits-all’ ERP system that doesn’t hone in on your unique processes.
With specialized software in your corner, you can continue to focus on both short- and long-term success as you build compliance and traceability into your processes.
What are you doing to achieve operational excellence at your company? Tweet us @justfooderp.
Ready for a specialized food ERP? Learn more about Aptean Food & Beverage ERP JustFood Edition — a solution purpose-built to solve your challenges and propel your food business and digital transformation to the next level.
