The answer for most companies to this question can be encompassed in a single word: traceability.
This encompasses the ability to track exactly where ingredients come from, even down to the individual batch, so that shelf lives can be accurately determined, or to identify precisely where livestock has come from, what the animal ate etc., so that (heaven forbid) should a foot-and-mouth scare or similar occur again, the disruption to production can be mitigated as much as possible.
Yet, so many companies who have invested time and money into fully functional ERP systems are still using external systems to store this data, and often even failing to integrate this data with the ERP system itself. Some of these companies are even using manual records and then re-entering the data manually after the event.
If you have an ERP system, you should be able to retrieve all relevant information on any single batch, no matter how long ago, including the details of every ingredient from the point of entering the warehouse to the point of delivery with your customer.
So when this ability is quite literally at fingertips, why is it all too common for companies to waste further investment on additional data entry, storage and even head-count to manage this information, when the ERP system they have also invested in is able to all of this, while also integrating with financial, stock and even payroll systems for a fraction of the cost?
Andrew Brown is MD of the process manufacturing systems division of Solarsoft.
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