Pecan nut supplier boosts quality control and business process visibility

The country’s largest pecan nut grower turned to Greentree to reduce business risk and improve process disciplines...

Stahmann Farms is a privately held company, and is the largest pecan nut grower and processor in the Southern Hemisphere.

From New South Wales and Queensland Stahmann Farms grows, processes, and distributes pecan nuts to Australian supermarkets, major wholesalers and export to USA, Europe, Asia and New Zealand. The company is also a major toll processor of Macadamia Nuts.

John Howard, finance and administration manager at Stahmann Farms, says that several factors had increased the business’s risk, and amplified the need for greater visibility of inventory.

These included business growth, shortened customer supply time cycles and inventory management.

Risky manual processes needed to be factored out of inventory management whilst a coherent quality control process needed to be factored in.

Poor visibility of the status of stock and slow enquiry times was frustrating and increased the opportunity for error thus predisposing the business to even greater risk.

Howard says staff would often prefer to physically segregate, inspect and mark stock to determine its status, in association with email communication to determine what product was clear for despatch.

The company chose Greentree’s business solution because of its real-time visibility which enabled management and staff to quickly ascertain the location and status of inventory at a glance.

However, before anything could happen, an audit of the organisation’s business processes and user requirements was undertaken by Greentree partner blueStar. blueStar is a provider of business management software and consulting services to organisations across a wide range of industries. It has developed a reputation across Queensland for building profitable interactive business relationships.

Smooth implementation process
There was no need to waste valuable time checking and re-checking that everyone was on the same page. “blueStar quickly interpreted our needs and captured the essence of what was required from the beginning and this shortened-up the implementation process,” Howard says.

blueStar began re-engineering the inventory management process and the system worked effectively from day one ensuring a return on investment was realised quicker than expected.

He believes Stahmann Farms have reaped 80 to 90 percent of the benefits of Greentree’s Quality Control module upfront and says enquiry times have been dramatically reduced and management and staff now have real-time access to inventory status and availability. This has had a flow-on effect in terms of promoting better business practices.

More disciplined approach
Changes made to the Quality Control module in consultation with Greentree have resulted in the adoption of a more disciplined approach to Inventory Management.

Much quicker track and trace, and ready-identification of stock using Greentree’s integrated lot tracking functionality, means there’s no need to waste time physically inspecting stock. Since Greentree’s Quality Control module is an integral part of Inventory Management, the business has achieved a significant milestone.

Howard says that “now we can’t sell items that haven’t been cleared through our quality control system and this has ultimately reduced our business risk.”

He enthusiastically describes the latest customisation project being worked on by blueStar called ‘Shop-Floor software’ which creates a sense of ownership, since the Shop Floor doesn’t typically use software.

This will eliminate the paper-based creation and transfer of goods from location to location and “democratise” the inventory process. Additionally, it will eliminate the time delay in committing stock to inventory by providing ‘real time’ information.

Howard explains that paper-based batched records were centrally entered into the system and an inventory view would only be as up-to-date as when the last lot of records were entered.

Access for all
The Shop-Floor software is basically Greentree’s Job Cost module customised by blueStar to do a job it wasn’t intended to do but Howard says “it works beautifully”.

He explains that Stahmann’s manufacturing process is unusual in that variable inputs produce variable outputs so it doesn’t fit into a standard manufacturing BOM model.

Basically, the simple but effective Shop Floor interface enables staff to enter inputs like for example, 100 tonnes of nut-product, whilst bar code scanners will wirelessly transfer the manufactured output which may be 55 tonnes of raw nuts.

Howard explains that with the hand-held devices, staff can scan units of post-manufacture nut product straight into the system, without delay. He says this will immediately reduce stocktaking time and produce benefits further down the supply chain in other areas of the business such as reporting, inventory management and job costing.

‘Democratisation’ will have been achieved since all staff and management will have high visibility of, and live access to, inventory at a glance. Alongside the Shop Floor project is enhancements to the Sales Order Entry process which Howard says will “make entering transactions super efficient”.

In co-operation with Greentree and blueStar, this will become part of the standard Greentree functionality, and will deal more effectively with Sales Orders and transfers when using Lot Tracked product.

He says the cost for customer driven customisations and standard Greentree enhancements can often be a difficult case to put to management but having them observe the tasks staff struggle with everyday, resulted in a quick positive decision.

For example, at the moment, stock located in ten different locations is entered as ten separate lines into the system. blueStar’s new Sales Order Entry enhancement will leverage Greentree’s Lot Tracking functionality, by aggregating selected lots into one line in the Sales Order. This will reduce the time to enter data by 50 percent and the cost of the enhancement should be returned within 2 years.

Building on a solid base
Greentree and the customisation and enhancements developed by blueStar, have achieved significant time and cost efficiencies with additional gains further down the supply chain.

Quality Control and Lot Tracking are now embedded in the Inventory Management process forcing a disciplined approach to locating, selecting and releasing product for sale or despatch.

Howard is confident that Stahmann Farms will continue to grow into Greentree whilst “blueStar’s depth of knowledge of the Greentree product and understanding of our critical business processes have come together to produce elegant and innovative customised enhancements which have simplified complex problems and added outstanding value”.

For more information

www.greentree.com/customers/profiles/stahmann_farms.cfm

Greentree
Graham Hill, Channel Manager
Email: graham.hill@greentree.com
Phone: 1800 000 737
Fax: 1800 090 487
Web: www.greentree.com

7/11/8_ex_h_m

View Solution Provider