With changing times, increasing population, and strict government regulations, it is important for the food industry to maintain accurate records, match quality standards, trace production resources, and maintain a consistent supply chain.
The enormous workload and limited human capabilities demand a tech-infused solution. This is where Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software takes the forefront. Here is an easy-to-understand guide about Food ERP.
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What Is Food ERP?
ERP software is a unified digital system that aims to record all information related to the business, ranging from raw material procurement, batch supply, warehouse management, and financial accounts.
Originated in the 1990s, ERP has come a long way from Economic Order Quantity(EOQ), followed by Material Resource Planning(MRP) and MRP II in the 1960s. It was in the early 2000s that ERPs gained momentum in the private and government sectors.
ERPs for the food industry aspire to create personalized databases to ease product recalls during food standard safety checks, implement better business intelligence services, and build resilient market strategies.
The developers connect the company’s core system to ERP via the cloud, on-premise software, or SaaS. This facilitates exclusive real-time management of resources, production, inventory, and audits.
How To Implement Food ERP?
New technologies need timely execution for perfect adaptation. Here are four steps involved in the implementation of an ERP plan for the food business.
- Plan: Consult the IT experts, discuss the peculiar points and vulnerabilities of your business after its analysis. Explain your expectations and subsequently devise a plan that works in your best interest.
- Development: Digitalizing the whole firm is not an overnight process. It will need meticulous changes in machinery, working techniques, and employee training. Initiate the process and formulate a roadmap.
- Trial & Deployment: Every plan needs experimentation. ERPs also require trial tests to see short-term results. Midway technical changes and deployment methods may need upgrading or downgrading before going live.
- Support & Maintenance: After final implementation, constant updates are required for a sustainable ERP in the food business.
How Can Food ERP Software Be A Breakthrough?
The multifunctional approach of ERP has the potential to organize your food business with its incredible services.
- Weighing Scale Integration: Packaging is the mandatory and last step before the delivery. All products must be loaded in a fixed amount. ERPs monitor all the scale-in and scale-out weights along with catch, gross, and tare weight and maintain error-free records effortlessly. Any discrepancy is alerted immediately.
- Electronic Data Interchange(EDI): EDI’s facilitate a wholesome system that tracks all sales of products and stocks of unprocessed material, basic ingredients, and machinery equipment. This helps in the early procurement of raw material to sustain a constant supply chain in the inventory.
- Compliance and Tracing resources: ERPs are trained to accept only objective quality-specific material, which is set as per standards released by National Food Authorities. This ensures admittance of only excellent raw materials, which leads to the manufacturing of customer-oriented products.
Food audits are frequent in this industry. All thanks to the ERP system that assures 100% traceability of the resources back and forth from the shipment to the delivery, forming a real-time functional chain to detect any kind of breach in just a few minutes.
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