Smilde Foods Improves Financial Administration and Logistics with Enterprise Resource Planning
 
 

Smilde Foods Improves Financial Administration and Logistics with Enterprise Resource Planning

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Smilde Foods is part of the family-owned company Royal Smilde in Heerenveen, The Netherlands. Smilde Foods specializes in developing a broad and innovative range of high-quality food products, including margarines, oils, fats, salads, quiches, and sauces. These products find their ways to customers in Europe and Africa, such as retailers and food service companies, food producers, industrial bakeries, supermarkets, restaurants, and commercial kitchens.

The company employs approximately 300 people. In addition to its headquarters in Heerenveen, it has two production sites, in The Netherlands and a sales office in the UK.

The back-office organizational structure of Smilde Foods that resulted from the merger of two of its business units —Margarine Oils and Fats and Chilled Foods—had slowed down its business processes. To increase efficiency, the company sought to consolidate and harmonize its entire business software environment onto a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. To find the solution that would best support its needs, Smilde Foods completed an in-depth ERP selection process. After evaluating the available market solutions, including Microsoft Dynamics, the company selected Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 to optimize manufacturing and distribution and to streamline ingredient purchasing for improved financial management.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Smilde Foods

  • “Implementing Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 helped increase our business process efficiency in financial administration, purchasing, production, and logistics, while also reducing financial risk and optimizing IT management and maintenance costs.” – Richard Elsinga, Information and Communications Technology Manager, Smilde Foods

  • Upgrade to a new ERP environment to support optimal business processes that improve the overall organizational structure
  • Implement a solution that can be easily rolled out over multiple sites in different locations
  • Optimize the food-production, raw-material purchase process—including for producing margarines and salads—to reduce financial risks
  • Optimize price quotation administration and standardize order processing

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Optimized manufacturing and distribution activities—including the raw materials and packaging supply chain—across its two business locations for improved collaboration with external logistics providers and remote production sites—thanks to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Supply Chain Business Modeler and Manufacturing Management
  • Consolidated and optimized purchasing processes for food product ingredients, like fats and oils, based on real-time information on commodity pricing on the exchange market
  • Improved financial management, using JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financials for hedging financial risk by gaining insight into the actual raw material requirements for informed purchasing decisions, thanks to Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g
  • Implemented JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 for 100 users and significantly reduced maintenance efforts and costs by consolidating business processes onto one ERP system
  • Consolidated processes for price quotations and standardized order processing logistics for providing supplies, such as raw materials and for packaging, on demand


Implementation Process

Smilde Foods replaced its Infor - Business Planning and Control System ERP system that was implemented in its Chilled Foods business unit. Its other business unit was already on JD Edwards 8.0.

Smilde Foods wanted to start with a clean slate and re-implement JD Edwards Enterprise 9.0 completely to minimize customized processes and add-ons.

Partner

Oracle Platinum Partner Ordina implemented Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0, using its Oracle Accelerate Solution for JD Edwards for the Food and Beverage industry, and integrated it perfectly with the organization’s existing technology, delivering a complete ERP solution that fit the needs of Smilde Foods. 

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