EFACS provides backbone for business growth for pet food manufacturer
h2.Golden Acres
Customer Profile
An established family firm, using the most up to date production methods and machinery, Golden Acres farm over 2,500 acres in West Lancashire to supply the Golden Acres Mill.
The Challenge
From the outset Golden Acres knew that any replacement system would ideally have to be browser based and have an SOL database in order for it to be compatible with the company’s own existing database and integrate seamlessly, and in real¬time.
The Solution
When it came to replacing its existing ERP system, the only solution which met with the company’s exacting standards was EFACS E/8 from Exel Computer Systems.
The Benefits
The benefits Golden Acres has enjoyed since has also made a big impact, right across the business. Above all, the company now has an integrated system which works seamlessly with its own IMS, in real-time.
EFACS provides backbone for business growth for pet food manufacturer
Golden Acres is a leading manufacturer and packer of high quality, branded pet food products to its customer’s exact requirements. This commitment to providing unparalleled flexibility and service levels to over 250 different customers extends from sourcing specialist raw materials and packaging to assisting with the nutritional requirement of the product and the positioning in the market place.
Golden Acres is a leading manufacturer and packer of high quality, branded pet food products to its customer’s exact requirements. This commitment to providing unparalleled flexibility and service levels to over 250 different customers extends from sourcing specialist raw materials and packaging to assisting
with the nutritional requirement of the product and the positioning in the market place. Golden Acres achieves this through using only the highest quality raw materials, an ongoing investment in research and development, and the use of the most up to date production methods, machinery and IT. When it came to replacing its existing ERP system, the only solution which met with the company’s exacting standards was EFACS E/8 from Exel Computer Systems.
Golden Acres manufactures on a considerable scale, with target production levels of over 2000 tonnes per week, every week, from its single manufacturing site. 3 state-of-the-art extruders run 24/7 leading to 12 packing lines, with distribution and packing being aided by 4 satellite facilities. The company also has an incredibly flexible approach to its customers, handling a mixture of Make to Order and Make to Stock orders. Moreover, the 600 different dry pet foods and over 5000 different stock items can be packed into pack sizes from 30g to 1 tonne in size, enabling Golden Acres to cater for the needs of individual buyers through to large national multiples.
Golden Acres works on a 5 day turn around from receipt of order to dispatch of order, with orders being received from the web, email or phone. From the recipe of the order, stock levels are assessed from which decisions are made about which materials may need to be purchased. A works order is generated and followed throughout the manufacturing process, after which the order goes into stock. The corresponding Sales Order is available to warehouse pickers, who then dispatch the finished order accordingly.
As Steven Wheeler, IT Project Manager for Golden Acres states, “That’s an awful lot of data we have to handle on a daily basis, and because we are manufacturing product all the time, it’s vital we have complete real time visibility. Not just of what is being made, and when, but also what has already been made, where it’s stored, and when it’s due to be dispatched.” Recent trends have made this need for data accuracy and visibility even more acute as Wheeler explains. “As Golden
Acres has grown, so has our reputation for manufacturing premium and super premium products, much of which requires absolute production control, exacting quality standards, and complete traceability. We are noticing a corresponding move towards more Make to Order products, which means it is vital that our own IT systems can seamlessly integrate with those of our customers, especially as web ordering becomes more prevalent.”
Prior to Golden Acres investment in Exel EFACS, the company had been using an aging Sage Line 100 system in conjunction with its own Integrated Management System (IMS). The fact that Sage used batch transfers for communicating data between itself and IMS had always been identified as a potential weakness, especially as Golden Acres has a general policy towards data automation. However, as Wheeler puts it, “As Golden Acres continued to grow, Sage simply ran out of steam and increasingly struggled with the volumes of data we were having to deal with.” He continues, “With the need for real time, and accurate data becoming ever more prevalent, we were continually reducing the batch update times to try and achieve this. Worst of all, given the nature of the batch transfer, if it failed we would lose all the data in that batch. The more we grew our business, the more we relied on our data for accurate decision making. It was time to change.”
From the outset Golden Acres knew that any replacement system would ideally have to be browser based and have an SOL database in order for it to be compatible with the company’s own existing database and integrate seamlessly, and in real-time, with the IMS. An initial investment in developing a replacement with its existing reseller based on Sage Line 100’s proposed SOL offering proved to be a dead end, and a very real motivator for finding a completely new system. Wheeler recalls the occasion very well. “It was 2 days before Christmas 2004. The Sage based system was being continually delayed, largely as it was being developed by one person. We were also increasingly aware that it would have significant limitations with respect to the functionality we required. A conversation with our chairman, Roger Bracewell,
led to a decision being taken to abandon the project and find a replacement, and quickly.”
As Wheeler remarks, it was Bracewell who was instrumental in the decision to choose EFACS. “We’d researched some alternatives but there were few genuine browser based solutions which offered the state of the art technology we required. As soon as Roger saw the EFACS solution, the decision was made. Not only did EFACS provide us with the technology we needed for a real-time backbone for our
IMS, it also provided us with the flexibility to modify the system to our own way of working, especially concerning the data entry into the system. It also had the functionality to help us with traceability of materials, all the way through the manufacturing process, from incoming raw materials though to despatching of goods.”
Implementation commenced shortly after the formal decision to choose EFACS in February 2005 and began with a thorough exercise in assessing how EFACS would work within the Golden Acres environment, how it would interact with IMS, and how it would need to be fitted around specific business areas. Once this was completed, a test system was installed on a test server, and a comprehensive script developed to transfer sample live data across onto the test system. This was then interfaced with a test IMS to examine how the 2 systems would work together with real data. Wheeler is pragmatic about the approach taken, “We knew we didn’t have enough resource to parallel run in anything but a test environment, which meant we had to get the test environment as close as possible to our live situation. We knew as well that we would have to make it work first time, which is why we abandoned a couple of soft go live dates, before finally successfully going live on 28th January 2006.”
In fact, the only issue Golden Acres had with the go¬live was adjusting to the volume of data that the live system was using as opposed to the test model. Even here, Wheeler is upbeat, yet realistic. “We simply couldn’t replicate the amount of data the live system uses but within the first week we’d resolved 95% of our teething problems, with everything resolved within a further two weeks. At most, our customers might have experienced a day’s disruption.” Wheeler puts the overall success down to the significant time investment Golden Acres made in using its own IT team to do much of the implementation. “No-one knows our data like we do, so it made sense for us to handle the data migration and much of the implementation. We had very useful input from Exel consultants where we required it, especially with the setup of the test environment, but we wanted to ensure we knew the system thoroughly ourselves. This also made a big impact when it came to training because we were able to do the training in-house, specifically tailored to the individual job needs of everyone using the system.”
The benefits Golden Acres has enjoyed since has also made a big impact, right across the business. Above all, the company now has an integrated system which works seamlessly with its own IMS, in real-time, which is delivering all the hoped for, and needed, visibility. As Wheeler states, “We now know what’s happening throughout our business, from receipt of raw materials, through to dispatch. This of course is a benefit to each department, but more so to us as a company as a whole. Because everyone has been able to see for themselves that the data within the system is up to date, and they have easy access to what is relevant, people are now using custom reports to really get the best from each process. We’ve also seen a big leap in use of IMS because people are much more confident about its accuracy due to the accuracy and availability of data from EFACS.”
2 specific examples of where the EFACS system provides levels of functionality and benefit to Golden Acres that was simply impossible before can be found in the areas of traceability and stock visibility. Regarding traceability, the company is now able to trace from Purchase Order through to Sales Order and dispatch what has happened to every ingredient along the way, at any stage in the production process. The ability to do this has been pivotal in Golden Acres successfully achieving British Retail Consortium (BRC) Accreditation. The increase in possible stock status options, from on hold or live, to a range of different possibilities has transformed the accuracy and relevance of stock levels. “Now at a glance I can see how much stock I actually really have and how much stock has a problem with it. Not only that, I can see what is wrong with the stock that isn’t available and whether it may become useable, and if so, when.”
It is these benefits among many others that have placed Exel EFACS at the centre of Golden Acres’ development plans. Ultimately, the company would like to move to full job costing functionality whereby they can know at the point of receipt of order, the precise cost of the job, and therefore, the profitability. In conjunction with this, the company is also investigating a more automated planning and scheduling approach using EFACS. What is sure however is that Golden Acres recognises that it couldn’t have even reached its current level of success without EFACS. As Wheeler concludes, “We couldn’t have got this far without EFACS, it has become the underlying backbone of our business growth and will continue to be so.”
