Faster food flows from firm foundations

Think of Bisto, Paxo, Saxa, Robertson’s Jam or Sharwoods and you probably don’t draw an immediate association with advanced planning systems (APS), EDI, global e-commerce, web-based supply chain forecasting, demand and fulfilment systems, electronic workflow, business intelligence and tight integration across business and manufacturing systems. But that’s the current focus at Centura Foods, part of Rank Hovis McDougall, (RHM) formed from the merger of its Bisto Foods, JA Sharwood and James Robertson’s and Sons companies in 1999. Centura is based in Egham, Surrey, and operates out of five sites – Middlewich, Wythenshawe, Droylsden, Greatham and Stoke on Trent. Turnover is £200 million and the firm employs 750. Beyond its big name brands it also produces wholesale and own-label products, and the fact is it’s prey to many of the same pressures as any large, multi-site, multi-product, multi-customer manufacturing business. Ann Johnstone, Centura’s IT manager makes no bones about it: “Closer integration with suppliers is likely to give our best benefit – VMI (vendor managed inventory) and reduced stock holding through better integration and relationships with our suppliers… That and internal admin savings by doing things better.” Sounds familiar? And she reels off the shopping list of IT above – a list that wouldn’t be at all out of place in, for example, a Tier One automotive manufacturer. It’s not that food production and packaging is of itself particularly complex: although it’s typically fast and furious, most of it is single level BOM (bill of materials) stuff with seasonal variations and stock-building for Christmas and the like. But as she says, “as lead times get shorter, flexibility becomes more important to us.” And that means looking to its business and manufacturing systems to deliver everything from early warnings of events like low materials (“rather than waiting for the overnight MRP run and hoping someone notices you’re below safety levels”), to faster business processes by automating as many as possible using workflow. Beyond that, she points out that no one is immune from the web. Firm foundations Happily, Centura had done everything right in terms of getting its foundation enterprise IT (ERP) revamped and cooking properly back in 1999, and is now in an excellent position to build on it. The company had been an SSA BPCS user on AS/400, “but we were a number of versions behind,” says Johnstone, and Y2k was looming. So the firm did all the usual in terms of listing and grading requirements, setting up a cross-functional project team, shortlisting vendors (SSA, JBA (now Geac), Intentia and Acacia (now CA’s InterBiz)) (“we were only looking at AS/400 applications because we had a lot of investment in the hardware”) and ultimately going through implementation on Geac System 21 across the then separate businesses. It’s worth dwelling briefly on this for a few key points. First, Johnstone insisted on going as ‘vanilla’ System 21 as possible: “Our intention was only to change the package where it impacted external relationships… We’d learnt from our BPCS experience: it was so heavily modified that upgrade was just not a possibility… We’re going through an upgrade now – a service pack change – and it’s much easier.” Second, she and the project team used the opportunity for process improvement. Johnstone says the team – with the help of a manufacturing consultant and the Visio graphical system – mapped business processes prior to implementation. “At some sites we changed a lot… We brought the companies together and learnt from each other… Where there was no value-add from a process, like lot tracking on sugar, it wasn’t implemented.” And she insists the businesses benefited: at Ledbury Preserves, where figures were extracted, she points to 10% reduction in material wastage, alone resulting in savings of £150,000. Third, to get user ‘buy-in’ and better training, the firm ran conference room pilots with people from the different sites working together to improve not just skills, but big-picture understanding. And these were followed by separate, more in-depth company pilots. Says Johnstone: “For example, for Sharwoods we were running the whole process, not just the general ledger, but purchasing, inventory, a full audit trail.” It makes a big difference to the final outcome. And finally, on data cleansing, validation and testing, although it “wasn’t a big deal” because “all the real work had been done with the introduction and maintenance of the previous system,” it was taken seriously. “There was some adaptation,” she says. “For example, BPCS has separate BOMs and routing whereas in System 21 they’re combined.” OK, so now Centura is on Geac System 21, covering manufacturing (MRP/MPS), financials, purchasing, advanced order processing, transport planning, inventory management, interactive warehousing and Geac’s @ctive Enterprise suite. By May last year it had brought all operations together under one IBM AS/400 S20 serving all 250 users, and since then the focus has been on introducing ‘value add’ systems on the core ERP. For example, a Cognos data warehouse has been constructed on a separate NT server so 200 users can create and access ad-hoc reports, using Powerplay and Impromptu. Data is mirrored between the AS/400 and NT server so that information flows without delaying System 21’s transactional operations. Users now have access to their own information in minutes, where previously they had to wait for monthly reports. System 21 has also been integrated with Centura’s other third party IT, like its bespoke production and capacity-planning tools. System 21 provides customer demand, works orders in progress and inventory for these systems to create local manufacturing plans for each site. And the system has been integrated with a JAL (JBA Automated Logistics) advanced warehousing system at the group’s main warehouses in Droylsden, Middlewich and Greatham. The RF barcode scanning system links directly with System 21 – and it means that whereas previously workers were paid overtime to re-key data from local servers into the ERP, with the usual delays and errors, now information is always accurate. Modelling pays All good stuff: but more recently Centura has been using Geac’s so-called @ctive Modeller. Johnstone says the firm was aware of “an enormous area for improvement in our non-stock purchase requisitions, such as buying stationery, training and consultancy services… What we needed was one single Centura best methodology which would be easy to implement, authorise and administer, and which was easy for users to control.” @ctive Modeller was the key here, she says, making it simple to map the requisition processes on-screen, improve them, and implement new ones. Using the tool, the firm reduced what had been seven manual steps for simple requisitions, to email-based automatic workflow, with a hierarchy of authorised signatories and exception alerts. Purchase orders, for example, are now issued within minutes instead of days. Johnstone says Geac’s @ctive Enterprise, which so far has only been implemented at Centura’s Middlewich site, has already helped several departments with big productivity enhancements. She expects more to present cases to have this proactive technology applied to their areas of the business. One example may be new product development, which is split over many sites. The software could be used to streamline what are currently complex processes. Says Johnstone: “Our Geac systems have certainly been a major facilitator in the integration of our businesses. But what’s more, the advanced workflow capabilities … will make a big impact on our internal efficiencies. Its key strength is the ability to apply your own workflow desires – not just implement pre-configured routines.”