Means For Survival

Located in Kingston, Jamaica, Dairy Industries Jamaica processes and packages cheese in cans, powdered drinks, yogurt and cheese spread. As a 50/50 joint partnership between Grace, Kennedy and Fonterra of New Zealand, the company sells through distributors that supply its products to supermarkets and wholesalers throughout Jamaica and export Dairy's goods to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the United States.

When a global consumer products company began selling in Dairy's marketplace at very competitive prices, the small company had to act fast and reduce overhead to remain successful. After undergoing a challenging restructuring to reduce costs, Dairy realized it needed an information solution that would allow operation at a reduced staffing level, while at the same time facilitating its new strategic growth objectives, especially as its legacy system was not Y2K compliant and would no longer be supported.

The Perfect Fit
The company turned to the IDS Scheer's ARIS SmartPath for Consumer Products/Food solution, a qualified mySAP All-in-One solution based on the mySAP Business Suite family of solutions, which can be tailored for specific industries. A small-to-midsized (SMB) business, Dairy purchased the solution from IDS Scheer through the SAP channel partner program, which is designed to meet the needs of companies with revenues up to $200 million. Though the implementation took place under trying conditions, Dairy was able to deploy the solution in only four months and is now leveraging SAP technology to run a lean business with less money in inventory.

"We were implementing while we were reengineering the entire company," says Wayne Williams, IS manager, Dairy Industries Jamaica. "It was a hectic and traumatic time. IDS Scheer quickly learned our business culture and understood what we were trying to achieve. They mastered the environment in which the company was currently operating and worked with that."

Comprehensive Efficiency
Dairy focuses its operations around SAP Best Practices for sales and distribution, production planning, materials management, financial accounting and controlling. "On a daily basis, the capabilities we use most are distribution and inventory management," says Kevin Webster, SAP administrator at Dairy. "When raw materials and packaging materials are received, the inventory clerk immediately posts a document updating the inventory. Inventory and materials are then issued to production, converted to finished product and sold after release by our quality system."

Dairy also uses the ARIS SmartPath for Consumer Products/Food solution for short-term -- one to three month -- scheduling, with which it can forecast to the end of the year and plan purchase of raw materials along with that sales plan. "We also do production planning," says Webster. "We establish a six to 12 week production schedule that drives our material requirements planning (MRP) system and rolls into our purchasing process."

For a consumer packaged foods manufacturer, quality control and lot tracking are also crucial. The ARIS SmartPath for Consumer Products/Food solution helps there as well as everything coming off the production line has a lot tracking number. With produced food, there is a holding time before the lab results authorize the release of goods. In the SAP system, everything is stored by batch date, so Dairy can quickly access how much product it has on board, where it is, the date of production and when it is ready for release.

User Accountability
Approximately 40 users access the solution. "It makes us more independent," says Williams. "[Users] can log into the system and get the information they require rather than asking another department to furnish it." This has helped Dairy build better business discipline across the organization by enabling accountability. "With a manual system, people leave things to the end of the month," says Webster. "With this solution, you execute the transaction as soon as you get the information that triggers it. This has provided us with the discipline to take care of whatever comes across our desks each day."

Focusing on Business
This much-strengthened inform-information flow enabled Dairy managers to pull their heads out of the transaction-level sand and think more about business strategies. "In our present day environment, Dairy would be hard-pressed to function as we do and remain competitive without the SAP solution," says Williams. "We need to be flexible, and we get that flexibility from information that is real-time and ready-at-hand."

It all adds up to competitive advantage for an SMB business, so much so that Dairy's parent company, Grace, Kennedy, chose IDS Scheer's ARIS SmartPath for Consumer Products/Food solution to be deployed across its entire food trading division. Specifically, 12 companies -- which includes both manufacturers and distributors -- will roll out the solution in phases, two companies at a time. Using a "train the trainer" approach, IDS Scheer is guiding Grace, Kennedy through the beginning phases, but will eventually pass ownership of the deployment to Grace, Kennedy experts. The phased implementation is expected to take 18 months. By July 2006, all Grace, Kennedy food trading companies will operate on a single platform, ensuring visibility across the entire division.