Top European market nut producer standardizes on software platform
Atlanta January 20, 2004 The Nut Co., the European market leader and top producer in the nuts food sector, said it has selected Ross' iRenaissance suite as its enterprise technology to streamline its operations and combine disparate systems.
The Nut Co. is in the process of consolidating its seven European production facilities on the iRenaissance platform, using enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to unify and optimize its supply chain, increase cross-facility quality control and enhance production efficiencies.
The Nut Co. produces nuts and nut-based products for the consumer-brand, private-label and ingredient markets and has seven locations in four countries: The Netherlands, Germany, Poland and France. Formed in 2000 when several food companies merged their nut businesses, the company was seeking a solution to combine disparate systems, streamline operations and provide a unified view into its three main lines of business at the corporate level.
European Union food companies must abide by stringent country of origin labeling requirements, and The Nut Co. needed a supply chain management system to control the product stream from growers to end consumers. Producing more than 1,000 different products that travel an extended, multi-national supply chain, the company required superior product traceability and distribution management capabilities to track merchandise quickly and easily, as well as greater visibility into trading partner demand.
"With our vast distribution channels it was imperative to have a system in place that would enable better collaboration with our trading partners and a deeper understanding of specific demand streams," said Arjan Lammers, supply chain manager at The Nut Co. "By linking iRenaissance financial and supply chain applications, we will gain reliable forecasts for all of our production sites to drive our financial, production planning and purchasing activities, and ensure that we are equipped to deal with fluctuating retail relationships and trade promotions."
Using iRenaissance, The Nut Co. said it is able to implement bi-directional lot traceability, eliminating the paper trail from raw material to production and adhering to strict food safety guidelines.
In addition, The Nut Co. said the advanced forecasting tools in iRenaissance will help it to more accurately plan for customer demand for each production facility, giving greater visibility and control into the production and planning processes, enabling inventory optimization and decreased carrying costs.
The Nut Co. is implementing the iRenaissance suite in several stages across its northern European facilities.
