When the quantity and diversification of products increase, a PPS system becomes very useful for food & beverage industries.
“Before choosing any production planning software”, explains André Muehlberger, director of the Italian subsidiary of CSB-System SE Group, “we recommend evaluating three aspects first: functionality, user-friendliness and cost. Experience has taught us that arealways be more advantageous to implement the integrated solution of an ERP that is already complete and specific to the food sector, such as the CSB-System, rather than buying planning software that then must be interfaced with the ERP.
And interfaces, as we know, entail costs for development, maintenance and adjustments, which are saved in an integrated software”. Moreover, software integration ensures that the data is immediately available and up-to-date and ready for processing. “Customers who have chosen to integrate the CSB PPS module move within an already familiar software, whose logic and user interface they are familiar with”, continues Guido Girardelli, CSB-System sales manager.
“This makes it easier to optimize its use in the handling of work routines. “Thus, not only the costs for training employees will be lower, but also those for implementation. The costs for introduction, optimization, maintenance and operation of an integrated solution are always lower than for a specific island solution. A homogeneous IT landscape is more than the sum of its parts, and every IT manager suddenly realizes this at the latest when there is a software update”. In the food industry, recipes, bills of materials, cutting lists, allergens, best-before dates must be part of the planning.
The recipe and production variants used in the company are also represented in the PPS module. Also decisive are the optimal flow of raw materials and the close integration between the production department and the purchasing, sales, dispo and warehouse areas, because the key word is “freshness”. The PPS module of the CSB-System ERP takes these aspects and many more into account.
Planning and control of orders
The management of risks and critical issues in the fresh produce supply chain has always been done according to national and international best practices. Everything is documented in a secure and traceable way: production data acquisition and the PPS module are perfectly coordinated. After entry (via EDI or CSB Web Shop or more traditional channels) and acceptance of sales orders, these are planned according to short, medium and long-term time scenarios and then assigned to the individual departments and/or workstations in charge of preparation, thus becoming production orders.
A workstation allocation plan is also automatically created. Based on the preparation time, CSB-System optimises the use of human resources and raw materials/production components. Once a production order has been assigned, the software monitors its progress. For each production lot the actual times are compared with the planned times and start/end times. In this way production managers can identify delays and difficulties and to intervene promptly with corrective measures.
The status of individual production lots and orders is displayed progressively in an intuitive manner depending on whether they are being processed, completed on time not processed. Furthermore, CSB-System’s M-ERP enables the optimization of production operations through flexible and simplified procedures. “It is worth emphasizing that the CSB-System ERP is not only integrated but also modular and complete”, Muehlberger concludes, “able to manage a food company at 360˚ and includes general and industrial accounting, business intelligence, predictive maintenance, CIM connections with weighing lines, and much more”.
