Container fill transformation: Marks & Spencer reduces shipping and carbon footprint

Ground-breaking packaging optimisation technology is helping some of the world’s biggest retailers transform their global supply chains by reducing shipping costs and their impact on the environment.

The Packaging Compliance module, pioneered by global supply chain management specialists EV Cargo Technology, also cuts wastage, and promotes sustainability by improving transit packaging compliance, minimising damage, and increasing the amount of product which can be shipped.

Since implementing the system, a year ago, Marks & Spencer have been able to rationalise 3,800 carton types to just 10 – a 99% reduction in under eight weeks.As a result, they have increased shipping container fill levels for clothing garments by more than 15% to a market-leading 95%.

The module has also helped condense lead times for approval of transit packaging and shipping of goods from 72 hours to just a few minutes.

This helped M&S exceed its planned benefit of 15% cost savings, part of a three-year initiative to increase efficiency within its international supply chain through packaging optimisation.

“Underpinning this success has been the migration from a clunky packaging approval tool to EV Cargo Technology’s streamlined Packaging Compliance module, which has provided the data to help us track cartons, establish what was in them and dramatically improve container fill levels.

“It reduced complexity and cut out the need for lots of extra solutions from a supplier perspective. Significantly, it has also reduced the lead time required from approving transit packaging to raising a packing list, giving us more flexibility with time in case any issues were to arise.”

Stephen Jarman, vendor performance and compliance, M&S

The cloud-based module requires suppliers to confirm transit packaging sizes and construction against agreed standards set by the retailer or brand owner; any requests that are outside of tolerances are flagged, reviewed and, if appropriate, rejected either manually or through automation built into the system.

“EV Cargo Technology is renowned for intelligently applying supply chain technology to deliver operational, cost and sustainability improvements for its customers. The positive results with M&S are encouraging and very typical of what can be achieved.

“Our data-led approach and application of best practise through our range of global supply chain modules continue to deliver unrivalled benefits to manufacturers and retailers with complex international supply chain needs.”

Duncan Grewcock, Chief Commercial Officer, EV Cargo Technology

 

Catch up on ASCI’s latest webinar featuring EV Cargo Technology’s Duncan Grewcock.

For more information about EV Cargo technology please visit the website: https://www.evcargotech.com 

 

 

Food & Beverage: Five Ways SYSPRO can Alleviate Your Headaches

(Part 1)

Last weekend a group of colleagues, most of us in the ERP field, broke out the barbies and commandeered a stretch of shady beachfront. The group shares a passion: we are all in one way or another obsessed with manufacturing, which is why we began analysing the value chains that brought us the food and drink we were consuming. As we cleaned up our rubbish, we offered a silent and non-denominational prayer of thanks to the companies that bring us our modern cornucopia of beverages and food.

Back at work on Monday, I found myself brain-storming a blog topic. My mind, still half in weekend mode, turned gratefully to our food-manufacturing conversation. SYSPRO, after all, is the ERP of choice for hundreds of food and beverage companies. Our industry-specific functions are designed to ease the rigours of an extremely competitive industry, by managing financial complexities, optimising operations, guaranteeing quality, and offering precise control over every aspect of the supply chain.

Food Safety & Compliance

If you want to avoid giving a food manufacturer a nightmare, don’t mention Salmonella, E.coli, SARS, melamine, mad cow disease or bio-terrorism. All food production, in-home or in-factory, carries the potential for risk, but for manufacturers, the responsibility is vastly multiplied. Food and beverage companies need to ensure complete food security, as specified by government-mandated, industry-required food safety programs.

Food safety regulations begin with expiration dates and packaging, but extend to traceability of product throughout the entire supply chain. With SYSPRO’s Lot Traceability module, both tracking (farm-to-fork) and tracing (fork-to-farm) per product, lot and supplier ingredient is automatic and easily retrieved. For raw materials, products, packaging materials and processing equipment, a wealth of information is preserved at every point along the value chain, including incoming materials, manufacturing operations, inventory management and customer shipments. For every action that can impact food, at any point in the supply chain, SYSPRO enables a food processor to trace all ingredients back to their source, and all finished products to their retail, wholesale or food-service destinations.

Of course, all that information needs to be made actionable in the event of an emergency, both for consumer safety, and for brand protection. Government-mandated audits are bad enough, but there’s usually a grace period if procedures aren’t quite up to snuff. Mock recalls aren’t always as forgiving. Many processors that supply retail chains are now conducting mock recalls on a quarterly basis, and the cost of failure can be catastrophic, immediate, and final. With SYSPRO’s Lot Traceability, mock recalls are fully automated. Many of our customers can conduct a flawless mock recall in thirty minutes or less.

Of course, SYSPRO is, at root, accounting software, and discussions of functionality inevitably return to ROI. There’s even a value-add to our compliance measures. Lot traceability increases visibility along the supply chain, which can be leveraged to ensure food freshness and quality, improve customer service, streamline schedules and generally reduce the costs of business. In the warehouse, for example, traceability allows pickers to easily adhere to FIFO (first-in, first-out), while fulfilling longer-distance orders from lots that are in no danger of becoming outdated.

Trade Promotion Management

Trade promotions are an enormous element of the Sales & Marketing mix for most consumer goods companies, and food manufacturers are no exception. In fact, many of our customers cite trade promotions as a key component of growth. Promotions campaigns increase sales and provide companies with valuable information on consumer trends and changes – how well these campaigns are managed can be critical to success.

In years gone by, promotions were generally managed by sales team, but these days the prevalence, variety and importance of promotions necessitate the use of ERP. Fortunately for our customers, SYSPRO Trade Promotion Management makes it simple to negotiate the complexities of contract pricing, volume discounts, trade promotions, rebates, multitier credit checking and comprehensive reporting. SYSPRO TPM tracks off-invoice allowances and promotion deductions, and provides efficient reconciliations that result in increased collections. And of course, TPM is integrated into SYSPRO General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Inventory Control, Sales Order & Invoicing modules. The bottom line? Reduction of confusion and complexity, huge savings in time, better information, better customer relationships, and (the pièce de résistance!) improved cash-flow and profitability.

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In Part 2 of this blog, We will go deeper into SYSPRO’s industry-specific offerings for the food and beverage industry, and how all of these functionalities can be utilised – with lower capital costs – on the Cloud.