Food, Beverage & Tobacco
Industry Challenges
In an industry where quality control is the name of the game, lowering costs while improving quality procedures and maintaining product consistency can be a difficult goal to accomplish. Add in the requirements of adhering to government and international regulations as well as changing consumer demands and other supply chain disruptions, and you begin to understand the truly challenging nature of the Food, Beverage & Tobacco industry. On top of that, in no other sector is shelf life and inventory as big a deal. Smart manufacturers must continuously be aware of shelf life when it comes to their stock levels, and planning and systems must consider this constraint in order to avoid superfluous waste and the high costs associated with it.
Our Industry Solutions
1. Product Specification Management
Our Product Specification Management solutions cover all the processes used to develop, configure and manage product specifications, from raw materials to intermediate materials and all the way to the finished product and packaging. They support formula management, with features to optimize recipes, create and manage workflows to make changes to formulas and recipes, create and configure formula variants, manage labeling content, plan inventory for scale-up and validate formulas to support production and regulatory needs.
- Product Specification Management
- Intellectual Property Management
- Product Variation Management
- Formula & Recipe Management
- Supplier & Internal Collaboration Tools
- Regulatory & Quality Data Management
2. Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
Alignment of demand and supply remains a major pain point for many food, beverage and tobacco manufacturers today. If demand exceeds supply, this leads to understocking and lost sales. If supply exceeds demand, this leads to overstocking and excessive inventory costs. Our Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) solutions aim to help companies operating in these sectors accurately forecast demand, minimize inventory costs and build flexibility into their planning processes, so they can react quickly to unexpected changes.
- Demand Forecasting
- Demand Planning
- Inventory Planning
- Production Planning
- Production Scheduling
- Supply Chain Planning
3. Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)
A successful Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is the key to optimizing manufacturing operations and ensuring product and process quality for food and beverage producers. An MES is an automated control system designed to manage and monitor all the work-in-process on a factory floor. The goal of an MES is to improve productivity and reduce cycle times by optimizing and synchronizing real-time production activities, and often across globally distributed plants. Our MES solutions integrate with Digital Work Instructions applications to support operators executing production in the factory. They also integrate with ERP and other business-level systems to facilitate data exchange across the enterprise.
- Production Process Status & Monitoring
- Real-Time Inventory Level Monitoring
- Digital Work Instruction Integration
- Manufacturing Quality & Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Real-Time Production Data Collection
- Performance Analytics, Reporting & Dashboards
4. Digital Supply Chain (Tracking & Tracing)
Growing global markets are driving intense competition in the food, beverage and tobacco industries, leading to a proliferation of new products and new challenges. Tobacco faces its own unique hurdles because countries do not want to lose tax revenue. Additionally, tobacco companies must develop tobacco-derived products to remain competitive. Multi-national regulations and global supply chains continue to make traceability difficult, and legacy ERP systems are no longer enough to keep up with the complex information demands of the industry. Our Digital Supply Chain (Tracking & Tracing) solutions help companies achieve end-to-end visibility of their supply chain to deliver authentic and safe products.
- Corporate Product Serialization & Genealogy
- Digital Global Batch & Material Traceability
- Serialization Data Management & Exchange
- Product Recall/Return Management
- Regulatory Compliance & Reporting
- Mobile & Cloud Accelerator Applications
5. Simulation & Decision Science
Since commissioning of new facilities, products and processes is often costly and capital-intensive in the manufacturing industry, applying simulation methods in order to identify improvements and solve complex challenges related to Food, Beverage & Tobacco operations and supply chains can improve decision-making and yield enormous benefits. Our Simulation & Decision Science solutions utilize advanced analytics, system dynamics modeling, discrete event simulation and agent-based simulation methodologies to help organizations study and optimize their factories, eliminate inefficiencies across their supply chain and better leverage their data to solve problems, gain insights and make the best decisions for the business.
- Site/Plant/Warehouse Layout Design & Improvement
- Manufacturing/Assembly/Process Design & Improvement
- Supply Chain, Resilience & Risk Assessment Studies
- Logistics, Kanban & Supply Chain Optimization
- Ergonomics, Throughput & Sequencing Studies
- Machine Learning & Mathematical Modeling
Engineering's Advantage
The Engineering Industries eXcellence team has worked with leading Food, Beverage & Tobacco manufacturers, processors and distributors of all shapes and sizes worldwide to help them transform their processes in order to assure compliance, maximize efficiency and optimize inventory while controlling costs at the same time. By working together, we can identify the most effective ways to apply the right technology solutions and our industry knowledge to each organization's specific requirements. Let us put our experience to work to help your business thrive in the challenging Food, Beverage & Tobacco industry.
Interested in speaking to one of our Food, Beverage & Tobacco experts? Contact us at info@indx.com.
