Industries - Food and Beverage - Assembly

In partnership with Schouw Informatisering, Admiral Consulting Group exclusively offers SI Foodware®. Combined with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, this forms a standard company-wide ERP solution for the food and beverage sector.

Many companies in the food and beverage industry have a simple production process with just one operation. For example if you are packing or re-packing foodstuffs into customer specific consumer packaging.

Although this might be a simple process, you will have to deal with the same internal and external requirements that apply to a complicated production process. The flow of goods from multiple items into one finished product must be traceable. Furthermore, it is important to register the material used and the output per production order.

In other words, you want to manage your inventory registration based on an assembly bill of material, because that is the basis for your cost price calculations. Even though Microsoft Dynamics® NAV contains a good manufacturing solution, companies that recognise themselves in the situation outlined above require a different, simpler solution.

SI Foodware

The Food and Beverage industry is characterised by specific requirements which can often not be catered for by a standard company-wide solution. For this reason Schouw Informatisering and Admiral Consulting Group have combined their many years of knowledge and experience into SI Foodware®. In combination with Microsoft Dynamics® NAV, SI Foodware® forms a fully integrated standard company-wide ERP solution specifically for food and beverage companies.

SI Foodware is under continuous development and meets the latest industry requirements. This creates a specific solution, where costs remain manageable as the amount of customisation is reduced to a minimum. SI Foodware has been recognised by Microsoft with the highest quality label 'Certified for Microsoft Dynamics'. SI Foodware consists of a number of integrated solutions, one of which is SI Foodware - Assembly. With this solution, food and beverage companies can easily manage and register the flow of goods in assembly orders.

Create Bill of Materials and Calculated Cost Prices

SI Foodware - Assembly begins with specifying the assembly bill of material (BOM). This BOM consists of the various consumable items of which the item is composed. The BOM is linked to the item master record of the product that is to be assembled. An example of a bill of material is shown below. When the assembly BOM is complete, the cost price can be calculated at the click of a button. The cost price also includes the cost of any resources used such as labour and machines.

Integration with Product Specifications

Using SI Foodware, you can also define product specifications, such as packaging specifications and ingredient declarations. These can be calculated based on the assembly BOM.

Create Assembly Order

SI Foodware is fully integrated into Dynamics NAV so when you create an assembly order you will not notice any distinction. The 'Assembly' menu has simply been added to the menu from where assembly orders can be created. In this example, 10 packs of item FP00008 mixed vegetables are to be made. At this stage you can assign a lot number to the items to be assembled because of compulsory traceability. You can also assign a location or bin code where the finished product is to be stored after assembly, for example cold storage.

Lot Numbers

From the assembly order, the assembly BOM can be retrieved and displayed on the screen at the click of a button. If required, a preferred lot number can be selected from the list of lot numbers in stock to fulfil the material requirements. Of course, multiple lots can be selected to reach the required quantity. When the order details are complete, the order is released for assembly. Assembly with Consignment Management can be integrated within SI Foodware. This means that for consignment account sales, revenues relating to assembled batches can be booked to the batches of consumable items.

Post Output and Consumption at Once

To increase simplicity and speed of working it is possible to book the output and the consumption in a single transaction. In that case the location and/or bin code specified in the assembly order is used to book the consumption as well as the output. However, the user can override these details. When booking the consumption of an item connected to a lot number, the actual lot number consumed must be entered manually.

At the same time the inspection status is checked. Assigning an inspection status to a finished product or checking the inspection status of a consumption item (raw material or semi-finished product) is possible if Quality Control is also integrated with SI Foodware - Assembly. Once the consumption and the output have been booked, the assembly order and the accompanying administrative transactions are created. It is then possible to zoom in on the various transactions, for instance by zooming in on a warehouse transaction you can see all the underlying bookings. When the consumption has been booked, the order is marked as complete.

Traceability and Inspection Status

As indicated before, SI Foodware is fully integrated with Dynamics NAV. Therefore, from within an assembly order you can retrieve all the information related to the lot number of an item required. For example the due date or the inspection status. Based on those conditions, a lot can be selected for assembly. It is also possible to trace any lot in any phase of the process, either forwards or backwards.

Conditions for SI Foodware - Assembly

As indicated above, this solution has been developed to provide administrative support for a simple production process. The conditions for using this 'lean and mean' production solution are:

1. You do not want to make use of version management for bills of materials.

2. You do not want to register the raw material consumption.

3. You do not want to use capacity planning.

4. You do not want to integrate assembly with warehouse management.