Source: Customer Profile

Company: Macphie of Glenverbie

A £300,000 business software system has already begun to pay for itself by helping to cut £200,000 in stocks over the last 12 months alone for a Scottish food manufacturer. Macphie of Glenbervie Ltd. are manufacturers of baked and part-baked products as well as various sauces, fillings and toppings. Total weekly output approaches 300 tonnes across these product ranges, which are used in frozen foods, cakes and confectionery produced by both large retail chains and small bakers.

The company, based near Aberdeen, prides itself on its quality of service and flexibility. Much of this flexibility, says IT Manager Graham Anderson, is the result of planning a firm three days' production out of five, leaving the rest to absorb rush jobs. Most orders have a seven-day lead-time.

The company was intent on increasing its customer care, service and quality and invested in the BLISS process software from Drive Computing. Based in West Yorkshire and Cheshire, Drive is a British systems house specialising in business systems for the process industry. BLISS is particularly suited to the food and drink industry because the advanced, integrated suite of modular software covers all aspects of sales ordering, recipes, quality and costing, management, stock control, materials requirements scheduling and planning.

At Macphie of Glenbervie, BLISS controls recipe costing inventory and quality management, production planning and control, sales, purchasing and financial management. The £300,000 investment helped overcome the inefficiencies which existed previously. Graham Anderson believes the software will raise machine utilisation by around 25% through better order sequencing. The six-week planning horizon relies on historical data.

In terms of benefits, Graham Anderson says that after two years' use, business has increased 50% while administration has reduced. Besides giving full product traceability the software has helped to cut £200,000 in stocks over the last 12 months alone.

Hamish McGhie, Macphie's Financial Director, said " We are looking to BLISS as an essential tool to enable us to deliver the quality and service that customers require and will require in the market-place of today and tomorrow ". This important new partnership reinforces Macphie's commitment to customer care and consolidates Drive's market leadership within the Food & Drink sector.

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