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Ensuring production resilience

31 January 2022

Charu Roy highlights what you should be looking for – in terms of software services and support – to help ensure production resilience. 

Production resilience, and especially supply chain issues are catching us by surprise and everyone is now aware of our interdependence on other countries and goods, as we see ships delayed in ports, massive roadblocks and stock shortages. Who would have imagined specific foods, cars, computer chips and toys would be so hard to get? The Covid pandemic has also exacerbated these problems and the product shortages that we are seeing become commonplace could last for a while. 

Despite manufacturers having access to the systems, tools and processes to help mitigate supply chain risks, many are feeling the strain on already heavily burdened resources – especially with recent labour shortages and the effects of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic. Organisations need to be confident that the systems they have in place are able to resolve issues related to product shortages, time to delivery and their own delivery of quality products. They also need a resilient IT infrastructure in place as an operational backbone, with the flexibility to quickly adapt and adjust production schedules to overcome any potential global supply chain challenges that may be on the horizon.
 
Embedded intelligence
It is clear that embedded intelligence is needed across entire production process environments –whether that is in the form of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Material Requirements Planning (MRP) or Manufacturing Executions Systems (MES) – to add resilience to existing processes. Modern software services and solutions need to be able to extend and embed themselves into the existing IT landscape owned by food manufacturers if they are to provide almost immediate value. 

Gone are the days when implementations would take between two and three years. New systems should be quick to deploy, with all master and even historical transactional data to provide continuity. These systems should be able to securely accommodate and improve any of the processes that already exist across a business. Such production software should add value to overall planning and production coordination between all internal and external stakeholders, especially with suppliers. This allows them to understand gaps in second source strategies and enables a fast redesign of their products to match market needs and adapt to any changes. 

Automation is also a key tenet within any software offering today, as it allows improvements within procurement, receipt and allocation, and ensures that quality ingredients are used to fulfil customer promises. It is also important that food manufacturers track quality levels, food safety and compliance standards within the entire production processes to avoid any last-minute surprises to deliveries. 

Effective software should be able to raise alarms, flag issues, and suggest corrective actions quickly, so that the teams responsible have time to react and change a course of action. Without this type of support from the software, it would be very difficult for food manufacturers to maintain quality and improve their resilience. Fortunately, new industry-specific software solutions provide manufacturers with the ability to dynamically adjust their strategies and ship ‘just-in-time’ products that meet contractual quality obligations and help organisations remain competitive. 

Charu Roy is VP product management, manufacturing at Epicor.


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