Navigating ERP shortfalls for meat and dairy

Navigating ERP Shortfalls for Meat and Dairy

Traditional ERP and supply chain planning solutions handle the assembly process well. Building a product is much more straightforward than the process commodity agriculture products go through – a disassembly process. This is because the inputs are variable in agricultural products such as milk, meat, trees, grapes, grain, or fish. Processing companies are then breaking the raw materials down into finished goods like cheese and whey, wine, or standardized cuts of meat like rib eye steaks or hamburger patties.

Common challenges in the disassembly supply chain process

Common challenges in the disassembly supply chain process stem from having multiple ways to make the same product. There are consequences from the choice to make a primary product, and those decisions early in the supply chain influence what else can be made as secondary or downstream products. This means overall profitability is driven by all products – both the high-value products that get the most attention and the bi-products, understanding that the impact of each production decision impacts all of these components.

Sales teams at ERP companies will promise you the world and say they can solve this problem… when they can’t! We have a customer in the meat industry that has been “implementing” a well-known ERP system for six years and it still isn’t doing what was promised in the sales pitch.

In fact, customers in the disassembly business that have gone with a standard ERP system often need our products the most. After a difficult year and a half long (or more!) ERP implementation they’ve come to the tough realization that their expensive ERP isn’t ever going to do what was promised unless they augment it with a product like ours, intended for their variable and volatile business.

Austin Data Labs helps soothe the frustrations and solve the ERP problems you face

How does Austin Data Labs help soothe the frustrations and solve the problems these ERP-only customers face? We built our product with data scientists and industry experts from commodity ag working hand in hand. We understand what they need a way that traditional ERPs don’t. We give customers the ability to handle time-varying bill of materials, or BOMs, due to changes in the composition and quality of the incoming raw material over the year.

This means we can handle multiple alternative BOM’s to make the same finished good material – for example, the composition of milk changes through the year, which drives differences in how cheese is made; our product “understands” that. Also, our product can handle seasonal production restrictions as well as your need to carry varying safety stock levels through the year. We also help you look at your profitability on a “per-head” or “bucket of milk” basis, utilizing the stream-return in totality instead of narrow, individual-products. These are just a few of the ways our product is better suited for your needs than an ERP alone.

We understand your frustrations and your needs.

Grab a demo and let us show you what we can do.

image credit Credit: Rimma_Bondarenko via iStockphoto

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