Organic Valley Harvests Enterprise Efficiency

Organic Valley Family of Farms is the largest U.S. cooperative of organic farmers and one of the nation's leading organic brands. Today, it represents more than 1,300 family farms in 34 states and Canada. Focused on keeping small and mid-sized farmers farming, Organic Valley produces more than 200 organic foods sold in supermarkets, natural foods stores and food cooperatives, and as ingredients for other organic food manufacturers nationwide.  

Cultivating Growth

With an annual growth rate of more than 25 percent, Organic Valley needed to consolidate disparate systems into one enterprise solution to improve operating efficiencies and maintain the quality of its perishable food products.

"We were doing our planning using spreadsheets and an enterprise system designed for discrete manufacturing to handle our financials, order management and inventory," explains George Neill, director of IT, Organic Valley. "As our operations expanded, it became obvious that we needed to make a major leap in our business systems." 

Farming for a Solution

Organic Valley chose to leverage Infor's ERP Adage as its core enterprise resource planning solution, along with Infor SCM Advanced Planner (AP) and Infor SCM Advanced Scheduler (AS).

"We enlisted the support of a consultant during our selection process to help identify which functions and features were the most important," Neill explains. "We had very specific requirements, like shelf-life management and expiration date management," he says.

Yet, the senior management team was a little apprehensive about taking on a complex ERP implementation at the same time the company was building and moving into new headquarters.

"I had watched many ERP implementations before, and with our project manager as the only person with hands-on implementation experience, we understood the potential challenges," Neill says.

One of Organic Valley's major business drivers was to improve overall utilization of its resources by improving and automating operational planning processes. The company gained an advantage with the new solutions because the planning and scheduling tools are supported by the same vendor and require no code customization, which minimizes risks during upgrades.

In addition, the company uses the SCM planning solutions to model supply planning needs. "The Advanced Planner tool really is the golden ring for us in pulling together supply and demand plans to optimize the manufacturing and distribution of all our dairy, meat and produce products nationwide," according to Neill.

All in all, the Infor solution has enabled Organic Valley to be more agile on the technical side, providing support for rapid business growth. The cooperative is even projecting savings of $2 million per year through improved supply chain planning and other operational efficiencies. 

Moo-ving On

In the future, Organic Valley plans to move to the next version of Infor ERP Adage and is evaluating other solutions and technologies to support its business.

"I'm incredibly excited about Infor Open SOA and how it can enable us to make a leap forward in how we manage integrations," says Neill. "We now have one integrated system to support all business processes across all of our lines of business." 

In effect, Organic Valley has slowed the rate of workforce growth while sustaining overall revenue growth, seeing an increase in sales per employee of 37 percent since implementation. 

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FAST FACTS

Supply and Demand Challenge
With an annual growth rate of more than 25 percent, Organic Valley needed to consolidate its disparate systems into one enterprise solution.

 Words of Wisdom
"We enlisted the support of a consultant during our selection process to help identify which functions and features were most important."
--George Neill, Director of IT, Organic Valley Family of Farms