Cromer Crab
Seafood processor Cromer Crab sought a manufacturing
solution to increase visibility of materials, packaging and stock.
Access Supply Chain has facilitated analysis of material and
packaging usage and labour efficiency yielding anticipated cost
savings estimated at £800,000.
Difficult beginnings
Nigel describes the business issues back then as poor stock control,
problems with manual production tracking and tracing, poor quality
information due to fragmented data across the business and high
admin costs even for providing basic management information.
He also points to a lack of costing and margin information, no
control over material wastage and no labour efficiency information,
all of which made life difficult.
All that started to change, when the combination of a new
management team and, coincidentally, some supplier rationalisation
among key customers resulted in major contracts from Tesco and
subsequently also Marks & Spencer, forcing dramatic change.
Says Nigel, "We made the decision to purchase the Access SQL-based
financials package, and after installing the IT and network
infrastructure went for the implementation."
With that up and running and management information and controls
sharpening up, Cromer Crab went looking for a manufacturing
and supply chain
system.
"We wanted several things from a new system, like real-time
views of stocks, the ability to trace product movements, consistent
data across the business, improved admin effectiveness, product
costings and the ability to identify wastage and to measure labour
costs by work centre," says Nigel. "We not only needed to be able
to reduce stock losses and wasted time, comply with retailers'
requirements and eliminate reconciliation problems, but also to be
able to use the system to review our product portfolio and make
production and supply chain improvements."
"We've now got true visibility of materials and
packaging stocks, work in progress (WIP), the whole lot." Nigel Plant
Finance Controller
The company also needed a system that would integrate with the
Dimensions financial
software, and that could use its coding structures, was
configurable, able to generate user-defined reports through Crystal
and that was modular, so that it could take a phased and vanilla
approach to the implementation.
"We chose Access Supply Chain for a
number of reasons," he says. "It was a proven manufacturing system
with other food-based suppliers already up and running. It was
clearly scalable, modular and flexible with wide-ranging
functionality. It catered for our integration requirements since it
comes from the same company. It was SQL-based with Microsoft applications
integration, which was important for linking into our admin and
management information requirements. It also provided for external
report writing through Crystal. But most importantly, they worked
hard to understand our business and they offered a strong 10-step
structured implementation plan and were able to offer future
enhancements like barcoding and forecasting tools, which were very
much on our radar."
As for the implementation, that had to start
with full business process mapping. "We had to do that because we
didn't have an existing system, so we used their consultant to help
us understand how we were working and how we could make useful
changes.
"Then we set up the project team and they did five days on-site
training, which was followed by setting up the pilot system with
the product coding structures, nominal ledger and the rest. We also
had to set up product costings and get into the detail of process
improvements and our reporting requirements. In fact, most of the
reports are now our own: the system has proved to be very
flexible."
With phase one of this implementation being stock control and
purchase orders only, end user training wasn't too big a deal, so
the system went live on-time after final data migration and
acceptance testing. "That took five months, and then over the next
six months we went for phase two, with all the other core modules -
sales order processing,
electronic data
interface (EDI), invoicing, production and
traceability
and lot control."
Nigel says hindsight provides valuable lessons. "Initially, I was
over-ambitious: I wanted to do phases one and two together, but
Access said we should split it up, and they were right. You need
that structured approach with sensible timeframes. The other
problem is resource: we had four project team members but they all
had their own day jobs. We should have taken them off those so that
we had the full resource all the time." He also urges awareness of
the problems of limited computer skills among staff.
"You can't expect everyone in production to have the skills.
Also, they're not going to understand the importance of their data
input to the business.
"So you need to be aware of the business culture and take a
proactive approach to the likely impacts of the system. If you
don't do training early enough, for example, then you're forever
playing catch up."
That said, Cromer Crab's achievements have been outstanding.
"We've now got true visibility of materials and packaging stocks,
work in progress
(WIP), the whole lot. The whole sales order process is now
fully automated with an EDI to our customers, and the purchasing
process is the same - from purchase order raising when goods come
in to receipt against that and, if price and quantity match, then
automatic processing.
Feeling the pinch
"We've also got accurate BoMs [bills of materials] for every
product, and that's allowed us to look at our portfolio to
understand problem products. Can we re-engineer the packaging, raw
materials, labour processes? What about the selling price? There
have been useful outcomes, and we've also aligned new product
costing with materials - pulling information in from Access to make
it easier and more accurate.
"Then on the sales side, we now have accurate history so we're
forecasting better and that means purchasing and also planning
better.
"We can now give suppliers three-month forecasts and talk about
quality and delivery performance. So we've improved our
relationship with suppliers and impacted the purchase price. Marks
& Spencer is now our second biggest customer: we couldn't do
what they need without this system."
The second part of our director's guide is designed to help you improve the usefulness of your chosen ERP solution. Taking a comprehensive look at the functionality that's on offer, it breaks down key operational areas into clear, easy-to-read sections so that you can make an informed assessment of the specific features that will benefit you.
Find out more »
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