ERP and Food Safety: Three Aspects for the Enterprise

Despite numerous high-profile (and even deadly) food recalls during 2011, food safety remained a widely misunderstood concept. Many food companies still don’t understand the full spectrum of activities that food safety entails. They might have a plan to prevent physical contamination, or chemical or microbiological contamination, but rarely are all three aspects combined into one comprehensive program.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these three areas to better understand the requirements for solid enterprise-level food safety.

Common examples of physical contamination would include glass or plastic particles. Many companies combat the accidental inclusion of these kinds of foreign objects by following a HAACP plan. However, the physical aspect of food safety goes beyond HAACP to include things like rodent droppings on warehouse or factory floors. Thus, prevention of physical contamination also includes a hygiene program, and that’s just one additional element.

The second aspect is chemical contamination, which involves product formulas. Manufacturers procure ingredients and additives from supply-chain partners. These ingredients might ship to the manufacturer’s facilities in 60-pound bags, with 50 bags on a pallet. Workers receive the goods and check for certificates of performance before sending them along to a warehouse. When it’s time for production, the goods leave the warehouse for a spice room or pre-mix room, and it’s here that food-safety integrity often breaks down with regard to the chemical aspect.

Workers in spice rooms tear open bags and scoop out ingredients onto plastic trays that sit on scales. However, there’s rarely any process of checks and balances to make sure that the right quantities are being sent along to production. In order to combat chemical contamination, that tray and the original bag need bar codes that can be scanned at each step along the way. Importantly, the bar code ID not only reflects information, but also receives information. The batch identification can be altered at any time to document alterations that workers make to chemical composition (e.g. if other ingredients are added, how they are mixed, etc.). Ultimately, the shop-floor worker will scan the tray to confirm that the final product was made, staged and consumed according to protocol before adding it to production. In this process the worker will be assisted by machines that compare information inside the product ID with master recipes and kick out the product if it isn’t up to formula.

Master recipes make the chemical aspect even more complex. The master recipe can never be changed and comes from product development. However, the control recipe can be changed and involves ingredient substitutions on the shop floor due to ingredient shortages. If a worker performs a substitution but the new ingredient doesn’t match the master recipe in terms of grade, class, fineness, color, etc., it could leave the door open for contamination.

Microbiological contamination rounds out our enterprise food-safety list. This aspect is particularly tough because the contaminants are not visible. Night shift workers are typically tasked with spraying and scrubbing down all work surfaces using anti-microbiological foams, in accordance with clean-in-place standards. Here the enterprise relies on the work force to break the supply chain so it can resume in the morning with sanitized surfaces. Just as with our spice-room workers and even the folks working in receiving, training is critical to make sure that microbiological contamination remains in check. When good policies, processes and procedures surround all three aspects, they complement each other to help guarantee food safety.

Our discussion here has only been an overview of the three main aspects of enterprise food safety. For instance, microbiological contamination could be further broken down to a discussion of allergen contamination. Preventative measures here include making sure that production runs containing allergens are kept until the end of the second shift, after which point the overnight crew removes traces of allergens from production equipment. We could continue to drill down, but suffice it to say that food safety is a complex topic that involves the entirety of the organization.

Managing this complexity can seem overwhelming, but there is help. An out-of-the-box ERP solution like it.CPG can help companies manage the documentation and tech standards needed to support capabilities like batch identification. But before it.CPG can do its work, the organization must ready itself through change management, which I have previously discussed here. Policies, procedures and processes must be put in place to rigorously uphold food-safety standards throughout the enterprise, at which point it.CPG can support and enhance those efforts.

For more information, feel free to contact me at Johann.Heydenrych@itelligencegroup.com.

The SAP Center of Excellence: Phases and Delivery Models

By building a center of excellence (CoE) around its SAP solution, an enterprise can go from simply running SAP to leveraging the software’s full power. Organizations can implement a CoE through a variety of methods, but the result of increased value from SAP remains consistent.

This post is the first in a series about the different considerations a company should weigh as they decide the right approach to building a CoE for an SAP environment. To start off, let’s consider the SAP-support options open to companies, as well as timelines to consider when planning a CoE prior to an SAP go-live.

When planning the SAP CoE, the enterprise CIO must first consider whether to build or buy—or to combine the two. We will explore the pros and cons of each a bit later. Another factor is the stabilization period that will be required to get the company from go-live to a steady state. This aspect of a system transformation is far too often overlooked.

Regardless of the approach ultimately decided on, all companies go through a period after go-live that requires intense support and focus as the business users and IT team start to fully adopt the IT and process changes made during implementation.  This phase typically requires significant support from SAP experts to coach end users, capture ‘new’ gaps, and continue to resolve low-priority issues that were determined less critical Read the rest of this post »

ERP and Business Intelligence: Marketing and the Move from “Cost Centers” to “Profit Centers”

The first post in our series on enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions and business intelligence (BI) focused on freeing data analysts from spreadsheets. The second post looked at how BI leverages KPIs. These topics are two examples of the same theme: Better information creates a positive impact on every aspect of the organization. BI gets the right information to the right people at the right time, regardless of which department those people work in. This allows for improved business decisions at every level and in every department, which positively impacts the organization as a whole. Now let’s see how this dynamic plays out with regard to marketing in particular.

A national automotive manufacturer, for example, might have extensive amounts of available data, but turning that data into actionable information can be problematic. Understanding which combinations of figures to look at is where BI comes in. By examining their business from a granular level, the auto executives can see where customers are buying their products at the state and even dealership level. This visibility paves the way for a more strategic marketing spend. If the manufacturer is running a national ad campaign for a specific model of truck but discovers that most of those vehicles sell in two states at a limited number of dealerships, they can recalibrate the marketing spend to target those specific locations.

Here again we see another example of the ability of BI to get the right information to the right people. In this instance, sales data becomes visible to marketing personnel, who can then make an improved business decision. Thus marketing, often labeled as a “cost center,” actually becomes a “profit center.” Armed with information about where to spend their advertising budget, the manufacturer’s marketing team can save money by placing regional instead of national ads, and in the process more effectively reach their key consumer base, ultimately resulting in higher revenues.

Human resources is another traditional “cost center” where BI drives profitability. HR might not be a revenue generator, but from a BI and analytics perspective it can become an effective tool in leveraging labor. When ERP first emerged, it largely focused on accounting, and companies saw immediate opportunities to reduce headcount among their finance departments. However, as ERP spread through the organization, it became more difficult to identify chances to make further staff reductions. Within the realm of HR, BI would allow a company to look at production levels compared to head counts throughout the enterprise, using metrics as a guide to see opportunities to revise staffing levels. Here again we see how BI empowers “cost centers” to drive profitability throughout the organization, and how improved business decisions within a specific department benefit the enterprise as a whole.

For a five-minute tour showing how SAP BusinessObjects solutions from itelligence can empower your entire workforce, click here.

Posted on January 9, 2012 at 12:11 pm by Rob Fiorillo · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Consulting, Marketing, SAP, itelligence, Inc. · Tagged with: ,

ERP and Business Intelligence: Key Performance Indicators

In our last post on ERP and business intelligence (BI), we saw how BI helps to free data analysts from spreadsheets. Now let’s look at another way that BI increases employee value, specifically through key performance indicators (KPIs).

Within enterprises there’s often a disconnect between the strategic goals established by members of the C-suite and the daily activities of employees. Using a robust BI solution like SAP BusinessObjects, companies can set up KPIs to effectively communicate strategic direction down through the organization. This involves routing the right information to the right people at the right time, in order to improve decision-making.

For example, let’s take a small-business owner who runs the enterprise on the following KPIs: utilization and margin. The owner hires a sales rep, who only pays attention to revenue targets. Revenue, however, doesn’t matter to the owner, as it falls outside the established KPIs. The salesperson could generate tremendous revenue without necessarily enhancing utilization and margin, but if those two particular KPIs reach the right levels, revenue will occur naturally as a byproduct.

In order for the owner and salesperson to get on the same page, they need access to the same, good data. An effective BI deployment will give the rep a dashboard or well-formatted report that allows visibility into available resources for driving revenue, as well as margins based on hourly rate and details about utilization. With all of that information pulled together in one place, the rep can make better decisions about selling—ultimately supporting the owner’s strategy and increasing revenue as well.

The same principle holds true for larger companies. If management establishes on-time delivery as a KPI, decision makers can compare current and past delivery numbers to understand how well the company is performing. If the news is bad, SAP BusinessObjects allows a drill down on the data, via hierarchies relating to products, personnel, etc. At this point, the executives can see which regions inside the company are underperforming, and then contact the heads of those regions. The subsequent conversations might reveal, for example, that certain SKUs are underperforming because of an insufficient product pipeline, giving the decision makers an understanding of the situation and the opportunity to make improvements.

In both these examples, BI gives C-suite members the ability to carry strategy throughout the entire enterprise. With the right information available at the right time, organizational alignment becomes possible. For more information on how itelligence delivers the power of BI with SAP BusinessObjects, click here.

Posted on December 15, 2011 at 12:50 pm by Rob Fiorillo · Permalink · Comments Closed
In: Consulting, Marketing, SAP, itelligence, Inc. · Tagged with: , , , ,