Business Imperative
Formed in 2006 as two companies – one company manufacturing extruded PET plastic, two-thirds of which was sold to third parties, and one company using this as a raw material for the production of thermoformed food packaging products – family-owned PFF Packaging Group recognised that its existing systems were acting as a brake on growth.
Based in Keighley, West Yorkshire, and with an extensive customer base within the UK supermarket sector, the lack of real-time information provided by its existing systems was holding back its effectiveness in responding to customers’ fast-evolving requirements.
“Consumers’ demand for particular foodstuffs is largely seasonably dependent, requiring supermarkets – and their suppliers – to respond very quickly,” says Stephen Tomlinson, PFF’s Head of Group IT. “The previous systems, supported by an extensive set of spreadsheets, struggled to deliver the necessary real-time visibility into the business.”
PFF’s core remit has always been to deliver, in full, the client’s requirements. Therefore, the challenges for PFF were customer delivery, customer service, control of stock and a need for real flexibility in production planning.