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Warehouse Automation in Food & Beverage Industry

Warehouse Automation for Food Manufacturers

Read More About The Power of Inventory Optimization

As a food and beverage manufacturer or distributor, the value of your company lies in your inventory. Your inventory is what generates  profit, what hours of work and countless raw materials are used to produce, and ultimately, the heart of your entire business. Since your inventory has the greatest impact on your bottom line, tracking it accurately and efficiently is essential to your company’s success.

While the importance of optimal inventory management is clear, small and midsize food and beverage companies still have a long way to go. 43% of small businesses still do manual inventory tracking, or even worse, do not track inventory at all (4)! And with more and more products being developed daily, inventory management is only becoming increasingly complicated. Customers are craving variety, which is why 54% of warehouses plan to expand the number of inventory SKUs carried over the next five years(8). Streamlining inventory management is imperative as you continue adding more product lines and increasing production. It is no wonder why inventory and network optimization technologies are the leading areas where leaders plan to invest in 2021. According to a recent survey, 54% of respondents plan to increase inventory and network optimization technologies investment, and 54% plan to invest in cloud technology (2). Inventory and network optimization tools also saw the largest YoY jump in companies reporting the technology as “in-use today,” with 45% of companies falling into that category, a 5% increase from the year prior (2). Food and beverage companies plan to invest in inventory management technology to decrease costs, improve customer satisfaction, boost productivity and accuracy.

Sources

  1. https://www.conveyco.com/warehouse-automation-statistics/
  2. https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/inventory-planning-network-optimization-mhi-report-warehouse/
  3. https://www.bain.com/about/media-center/press-releases/2020/balancing_resilience_speed_and_efficiency_90_percent_of_retail_consumer_goods_companies_plan_to_modify_their_supply_chain_networks_in_response_to_fallout_from_covid_19/
  4. https://financesonline.com/supply-chain-trends/
  5. https://www.selecthub.com/warehouse-management/warehouse-automation-trends/
  6. https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/inventory-management/#what-is-inventory-management
  7. https://www.conveyco.com/inventory-statistics/
  8. https://blog.capterra.com/inventory-management-statistics/

“The level of automation we now have is awesome. We can effectively track every part of our operations in real time and effectively manage
each facet of our omnichannel strategy.  Visibility into our inventory at every location is crystal clear and we have instant access to all of our sales, customer and production data. As a result, we can make better decisions and better manage our growth process.”

– Nora Orozco, President, BED|STÜ

What Our Customers Say

Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner, Baronet Coffee

Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner

“Anyone you tell that you’re going to a new ERP system, they all give you that ‘pained look.’ To think that we’re on a year from when we did discovery to now three months into our live implementation, and all we’re working on is some fine-tuning. Some of these fine-tuning tasks are those little things that make our life so much easier, but this wasn’t what I expected when we went live because people told me so many horror stories. I was thankful for the effort on both Softengine and Baronet teams.”

Denise Ost, Chief Operating Officer, Goodwill Industries, San Joaquin Valley

The good news is that SAP Business One's Sales Analysis capabilities enabled us to evaluate the results of that campaign and then make adjustments for future promotions. Specifically, we can check the number of transactions, discount levels and net gain or loss per promotion and per location. We have to be very careful with how we spend our precious marketing dollars and the new system gives us the tools to optimize our investment in that area.

Jason Dugan, CFO, Trudeau Distributing Company

Softengine has been a key contributor to our rollout of SAP Business One. The company's consultants were excellent and helped ensure that we had a successful implementation.

Leonard Kang, Operations Manager, Christopher Lena

We decided to find a partner we could put our trust in. Softengine is very experienced and systemized in its approach. We were very confident we’d made the right choice. Small businesses might be intimidated by SAP software. What they don’t realize is that SAP offers solutions designed specifically for small to midsize companies like ours.

Ray Lacorte, VP of Operations, Choice Organic Teas

We feel like we are in great hands with Softengine and the SAP Business One system they installed. It’s nice to finally put all those unreliable ERP systems and redundant procedures in the rear-view mirror.

Justin Ku, Administration & Operations Coordinator, Swabplus

The Softengine team was able to tailor SAP Business One to deliver all the traceability Swabplus needed, including all the applicable reports. Softengine enhanced the core system to enable creation of new batch numbers if components don’t already have them and the option of batch-costing. They also added fields for escalation dates, expiration dates and additional inspection data (e.g., who inspected and when), which could be incorporated into each Certificate of Analysis.

Virginia J. Gregorian, COO, Turbo Wholesale Tires

Our experience with Softengine has been extremely positive. Any time we call for assistance, they always assign someone who’s highly professional and gets the job done quickly. Interestingly enough, I’ve become so much more educated about IT-related matters since working with the Softengine team on this project. Every time we need to upgrade the system, they walk me though all the steps to make sure that I completely understand what’s happening, which contributes to the overall success of the upgrade. It’s been a pleasure to work with them.