KB20201005/02: Sage X3 – For the Food and Beverage Industry. Built for your Manufacturing needs

Sage X3 for Food and Beverage Manufacturing

As a food and beverage processor or distributor, your company must effectively tackle the challenge of managing industry-specific requirements and legal mandates imposed on your business.

Not only must you efficiently fill customer orders, manage recipes, control inventory and plan production in an increasingly competitive environment, but you must also deal with the multitude of complexities resulting from increasing government regulations.

Additionally, economic conditions have fuelled rising costs that are difficult to pass on to consumers. To be successful, you must be exceptionally focused on operational excellence. You can’t afford any production errors, waste, spoilage, recalls, safety issues or other events that will adversely affect your business.

Fine-tuned to meet your specific industry requirements, Sage X3 provides the advanced functionality you need to remain competitive in the face of these difficult challenges.

Streamline compliance to grow faster

For food and beverage companies, Sage X3 provides vital information for making important business decisions and supplies it quickly.

The software’s robust core functionality enables companies to easily streamline compliance and eliminate inefficiency, providing a significant advantage over legacy systems and other less powerful ERPs.

Forecast supply and demand to grow forward

Food companies deal with some of the most volatile supply and demand
scenarios in business.

Bad weather strikes, crops fail, a new food trend pops up, and all of a sudden you have way too little product—or way too much. Although some element of the unpredictable will always remain, good business intelligence can help you predict seasonal changes in supply and demand so you can stock up or sell out accordingly. Sage X3 provides that intelligence in a customizable, easy-to-use interface.

Most food and beverage companies struggle to anticipate demand, leading to wasted stock or lost sales from understocking. With the powerful business intelligence tools in Sage X3, you can quickly draw on historic data to produce accurate forecasts—saving you money.

Achieve greater product and process consistency through formula and recipe management.

Predict and optimize the yields of multiple outputs of a production job by comparing planned inputs to planned outputs and plugging these values into a recipe or formula specification prior to initiating a production job.

• Supports single and multi-level Bill of Material (BOM) to manage recipes and routings during production.
• Yield calculation and tracking (+/-) throughout production.
• Manages by-products of the production process, maintaining raw material potency and other key product attributes.
• Multiple units of measure conversion capabilities.

Ensure quality management at all stages

Track and maintain quality specifications and test results for raw materials, intermediates, and finished goods at various stages in their life cycle.

• Conduct inspections throughout packaging and production, then automatically quarantine suspicious or substandard items for further inspection or disposal.
• QC testing and analysis covers raw materials, intermediates, and finished goods.
• All test results are recorded and maintained together with production history

Improve efficiencies throughout the planning and scheduling process to better assess demand

Compare loads on work centres imposed by existing and proposed work orders and manage the load capacity of each work centre, improving customer service and inventory levels.

• Analyse POs and scheduled and in-progress batches to assess demand against available inventory.
• Support for both finite and infinite capacity requirements planning.
• Drag-and-drop scheduling for manual viewing, simulation, and update of outstanding work orders and routing operations.
• Forward and backward scheduling

Maximize inventory usage as well as reduce spoilage and expiration

Eliminate inefficiencies and streamline your inventory levels with end-to end integration of your warehouse management as well as reduce inventory write-offs with expiration date, use-by-date, or re-control date management.

• Shelf life management with expiration date control and use-by date to fulfil orders based on unique customer needs.
• Extensive warehouse management capabilities with RF support and barcode printing.
• Supports directed operations such as directed put-away and pick planning and scheduling.

Proactively monitor your supply chain using lot tracking and traceability

Improve food safety with robust traceability and allergen tracking to ensure that you know the sources of your ingredients and what pressures might be affecting your suppliers during fluctuations in the food supply.

• Forward and backward traceability across the supply chain.
• Track each ingredient and end-item by plant, batch or supplier, lots and sub-lots, along with automated recall capabilities.
• Equipped to manage any recall situation rapidly in minutes—not hours or days.

Continuous command of your production process

Based on the availability of your ingredients or resources, plan your production run and instantaneous rescale up or down to reflect constraints as well as maintain composition of each batch.

• Schedule production runs on user defined criteria: by hourly, shift or any other period of time that fits the production cycle.
• Standard ingredient quantities are back flushed or recorded as complete.
• Update work orders during production — required changes are reported as they occur.
• Effectively maintain composition of each batch for repeat orders from same customers.

Key features that drive the success in this environment

Manufacturing management
• Process and mixed-mode manufacturing
• Recipe and batch management
• Allergen tracking and Quality assurance
• Weighing scales
• Catch weight management
• Work schedule management
• MPS/MRP
• Technical data configuration
• Production cost accounting
• Product packaging
• Capacity planning

Inventory management
• Multi -level warehousing: location, lot and sub lot
• Forward and backward lot traceability
• Multiple units of measure
• Shelf life management with expiration date
control including use-by date management
• Movements and transactions
• RF data acquisition
• Quality control and sampling
• Inventory costing
• Replenishment, inter-site transfers
• Mobile apps

Purchasing
• Purchase requisitions
• Encumbrance accounting
• Requests for proposals
• Purchase orders
• Multi-level approval processing
• Sub-contracting
• Invoice tracking
• Pricing and contract management
• Supplier returns
• Mobile apps

Financial management
• G/L
• Budgeting
• Expense Management
• Fixed asset management
• Cost and analytical accounting
• Accounts receivable, accounts payable
• Mobile apps

Sales management
• Pricing and discounts
• Quotes, contracts and open orders
• Order preparation, delivery, packing
and shipping
• Product configuration, options and variants
• Inventory inquiries and allocations
• Delivery scheduling and shipping
• Invoicing and reminders
• Customer returns
• Sales commissions
• Inter-company/inter-site sales
• Bill of lading and export declaration
• Mobile apps

Customer service
• Contact management
• Sales force automation
• Marketing campaigns
• Customer support

Sage X3’s allergens function allows tracking of manufactured products whose components have been identified with one of the food allergens.

Sage X3 capabilities for food and beverage

Sage X3 delivers a specialized food and beverage solution using pre-defined business rules and processes, together with a superior user experience that leads the market.

Built to manage both front and back office operations, the solution runs entirely in the browser and across any device.

Sage X3 streamlines tracking and puts all your information in an easy-to use interface that’s accessible to everyone in your organization.

Sage X3 is the natural choice to deliver a prescribed food and beverage solution.

Whether you are upgrading your existing ERP application or planning to install your first packaged system, your success will be highly dependent on identifying business management solutions that have a strong food processing industry foundation and can support your unique requirements with minimal customization.

Sage provides an innovative core of crucial business intelligence and management functions for the food and beverage industry, supporting greater transparency and food safety.

In addition, Sage X3 provides a solution for growth with software designed to support your operations for years to come. It is completely up-to-date with the latest technological standards, ensuring its readiness to adapt to changing regulations and business pressures. As your business grows, Sage X3 grows with you, giving you confidence to meet future regulatory and operational challenges with ease.

For more information please email us at info@sysfinpro.com or by phone on +27 12 880 0258.