The food & beverages (F&B) industry has a remarkably complex functional nature. It operates in a highly regulated and strictly controlled environment.
There is absolutely no scope of error, because even the slightest of mistakes during production could result with the end consumer in hospital.
Thus, unlike any other process manufacturing industry, manufacturing is a lot trickier when it comes to the F&B industry; predominantly because of the use of raw materials, which come with limited shelf life.
This perishable nature of the raw materials used thus calls for effective inventory management and control.
In such situation, basically the F&B manufacturers need to know how fast a product or its ingredients need to be consumed before they expire.
And to know the same, F&B manufacturing companies turn towards an ERP software with inventory management functionality, which has a host of benefits for the F&B manufacturers.
Apart from supporting their routine manufacturing operations, an ERP software with inventory management functionality helps them achieve inventory optimization and control.
Let’s take a detailed look at how inventory management software helps the food and beverage industry:
Lends flexibility & visibility:
An ERP software with inventory management functionality lends immense flexibility to the manufacturing business.
Flexibility in the sense that it integrates and aligns with the business’ supply chain. Having it at their disposal, the purchase managers can integrate their data with their suppliers, ensuring that lead times are at their minimum and the communication between the various stakeholders is transparent.
This integration lends complete inventory visibility to all the stakeholders, which means that the customers can track shipments, and the management can get real-time updates on the stock levels, knowing when to order and exactly how much to order, and also on where the items are in transit.
This leads to a substantial decrease in events of under or over-stocking, wastage, and delays in production, eventually resulting in significant savings.
Lends scalability:
One of the biggest challenges evolving manufacturing businesses face is the ability to scale effectively along with the business growth.
This is where an ERP with a robust and contemporary inventory management functionality scores big.
It can drastically improve a business’ ability to make a smooth transition to the next level of profitability, as against a fixed or static inventory management system.
The futuristic F&B businesses understand this, and ensure that their ERP system comes equipped with potent inventory management functionality as well as the ability to adapt and evolve ahead of the needs and requirements of the business as it scales.
Lends traceability:
A process ERP software with inventory management functionality comes with lot traceability, whose specific capabilities such as mock product recalls, Bi-directional traceability, etc. help the manufacturers manage complete tracking and tracing of all ingredients used in the processing of the final product.
The tracking and tracing functionality allows the food and beverage manufacturers to track all ingredients back through the supply chain, referencing the supplier’s raw goods down to the source item name and lot.
Besides, a process ERP system also helps in tracking allergenic ingredients which a product contains. The other benefits of this functionality include minimizing recall size, data integrity, sustained consumer faith in the products, quick response time, etc.
Lends ability to perform efficient planning:
A food and beverage inventory software comes equipped with planning tools that can help ensure optimal inventory control.
Using the historical sales data, trends and patterns of sales, etc., it can predict future demand, which accompanied with current demand, warehouse transfer requests, various supplies, inventory on hand is used to plan production and procurement.
In addition, an ERP system also uses information on lead times, and inventory receipt in order to make efficient schedules.
This helps the manufacturers achieve a near-perfect balance of inventory in production as well as sales, thus ensuring that the customer demand is anticipated and met, losses are minimized, and revenue is maximized.
Lends ability to determine shelf life/expiry date:
This functionality has to be an absolutely indispensable part of this industry.
The food & beverage products have a limited shelf life and thus it becomes essential for the manufacturers to know how fast a product or its ingredients need to be consumed before they expire.
Most process ERP system come with a built-in mechanism that alerts the manufacturers when ingredients are nearing or past their expiration dates, and even when the inventory approaches above or below optimal levels, thus allowing them to manage their inventory efficiently.
With the capability to track and trace the inventory from source to sale, and determining its shelf life, process managers can implement FIFO (first in first out), LIFO {Last In first out}, near expiry and such inventory protocols.
This way, they can reduce wastage, mitigate obsolescence risk, and ensure quality in the overall production process.
Conclusion:
The functionalities discussed above continue to be pivotal for the food and beverages industry. And an ERP inventory management software gives the above mentioned capabilities to food & beverage manufacturers, helping them address the various inventory-related challenges.
Having a process ERP system with all the above features can help the food & beverage manufacturers meet the requirements of the consumers, and stay competitive at the same time.
One such potent ERP system is BatchMaster ERP for Food & Beverages. To know more about ERP software for different food & beverages industry verticals, visit or our website www.batchmaster.co.in. You can also write to us at sales@batchmaster.com to know more about our other products.
