Foodligik Streamlines 3rd Generation Family-Owned Bakery
Executive summary
Butt Foods see their strength as adding innovation to their products. The management team recognised that to unlock the huge potential and growth plans for the company, they needed to modernise their production processes and back-office systems to work smarter, more efficiently and collaboratively. Investing in high output production lines was one initiative – implementing Foodlogik bakery ERP software was another.
The company had ambitious growth plans to double the size of the company in the next five years. We needed to modernise and streamline our business processes and bakery operations to enable that growth potential – Foodlogik was the answer.
Challenges
Before implementing Foodlogik, Butt Foods managed the bakery business on an array of Excel spreadsheets which had become very complex and interlinked. These were cumbersome to share across the company. The accuracy and timeliness of the data were becoming an issue and clouding business decision making.
“Having accurate product costing and product profitability data is critical for me,” said Danesh Butt, Managing Director. “I need to be confident in the data, so I can be more ambitious when tendering for new business.”
The Foodlogik solution
The aim was to achieve a “paperless factory” with Foodlogik as the main tool to make that possible by removing spreadsheets and paper lists.
Butt Foods implemented Foodlogik bakery ERP software across all areas of the bakery production business; including stock management, sales administration, works orders, recipe management & production planning. In addition, handheld tablets and scanning devices were implemented to facilitate paperless processes for stock movements and traceability using barcodes.
Foodlogik’s suite of KPIs and reports provides Butt Foods management team with up to date, accurate data, which can be shared and acted upon collaboratively across the whole business.
Production Planning (daily/weekly) – The weekly production plan now breaks down into daily buckets per product, showing the hours needed per day and highlighting any potential constraints. This enables production to be smoothly scheduled. Additionally, the medium and short-term material requirements net off from stock are also automatically calculated, with POs being raised as required.
Labour recording – Previously this was a spreadsheet activity, but now productive and non-productive labour (start-up and clean-down) is recorded in Foodlogik. This enables reporting of key performance indicators (KPI’s), such as utilisation, job efficiency and labour cost recovery against wage costs. The recording is done via the timesheet software and seamlessly imported into Foodlogik to avoid double data entry. This data also feeds directly into the overall throughput/profitability per hour KPI reporting used by the Butt Foods management team.
Product Stock – Previously pallet labels were produced via Microsoft Word and spreadsheets were used to create loading documents and calculate what we had in stock. With Foodlogik, the pallet tickets and pallet stock records are automatically created when we record production. The pallets are scanned into the Foodlogik trailer loading app which records the stock out into the remote warehouse and generates a trailer loading document. The documentation is pre-formatted with the traceability, best before and haulier details. This means Foodlogik holds a clear, single, accurate view of what stock is in despatch or at the warehouse. This data can also be seen on the weekly planning screens so we know how much to make for the regular top-ups.
Ingredients stock – Previously, one of the regular pain points was that ingredient stock was rarely accurate, only being up to date one Saturday a month, when a manual stock take was completed and entered onto a spreadsheet. Now, Foodlogik facilitates online recording of stock deliveries, and creates the labels to scan and track the batches accurately. Scanning is the most important aspect because it enables online transfers and corrections which means stock is always up to date, providing the basis of good planning. This has resulted in a significant reduction in the occurrence of stock shortages, or surplus’. In addition, because production is also recorded on the system, Foodlogik can track which batch of ingredients was used in which product, proving complete traceability data.
Stock valuation reports based on up-to-date prices are always available. This has simplified the end-of-month procedure to get stock figures to the Accounts Department, as they can now print the reports themselves.
Results, ROI & future plans
A single view of accurate product costing, stock and production data is now available across the company, visible for all departments to see and act upon.
The company had ambitious growth plans to double the size of the company in the next five years. We needed to modernise and streamline our business processes and bakery operations to enable that growth potential – Foodlogik was the answer.
The personal and professional development of staff has been boosted with all employees quickly adapting to using the Foodlogik solution and, despite initial apprehension, becoming very confident on both desktops PC’s and tablets.
“The staff love Foodlogik and wonder what on earth we did before we had the solution! We are looking forward to continuing to grow and expand to use more features, particularly in despatch. The team at Foodlogik have fully delivered on all expectations from a commercial perspective”, concluded Danesh Butt.
