FONTERRA

International Dairy Leader Saves Time With Mobile Supply Chain Operations

Fonterra, a multinational dairy cooperative, collects over twenty billion liters of milk a year.

This international agribusiness leader headquartered in New Zealand has a growing market in Asia. Fonterra Brands Asia Holdings, based in Singapore, oversees sites across Southeast Asia — but managing an international supply chain under strict regulations is a complex task.

Challenge

With multiple manufacturing facilities using manual inventory management processes, data entry was a time-consuming process prone to errors. As a result, the company dealt with poor traceability, cumbersome lot control, and inaccurate inventory balances — all of which negatively impact regulatory compliance.

Solution

To keep pace with the increased demand for dairy products in Asia, Fonterra recognized a tremendous benefit in reducing user input, simplifying transaction flows, and automating inventory management. Fonterra turned to Cloud Inventory® for the platform and digital supply chain solutions to provide warehouse automation integrated with the company’s existing enterprise system.

With Cloud Inventory, Fonterra has the foundation to streamline inbound and outbound manufacturing processes, on- or off-premise.

“Lot control and traceability were largely manual—and a complex process,” said Paul Ormond, project manager, Fonterra. “We introduced the Cloud Inventory solution on mobile devices at multiple plants to capture inventory in a timely, accurate manner.”

The company now uses the Cloud Inventory platform and solutions to automate tasks in picking, packing, shipping, and work order management. Fonterra workers on the shop floor can now capture inventory movements from the point at which they occur. Using the Cloud Inventory solution on ruggedized devices, workers can access and input data with the system of record to complete purchase order receipts, delivery processing, stock verification, and cycle counts, as well as inventory transfers, issues, inquiries, and more. And with Cloud Inventory’s solutions featuring pre-built apps, inventory management is quicker than ever, requiring fewer scans to complete transactions. That’s because, with Cloud Inventory, Fonterra employees can automatically decode a range of 2D and 1D barcode formats to determine item, lot, unit of measure, and lot control type.

Fonterra found a complete solution in Cloud Inventory, from a carefully tested deployment implemented by Cloud Inventory’s experts in warehouse optimization to thorough training of Fonterra’s key users. Fonterra is now self-sufficient and equipped with a tool that’s easily expanded to additional locations and users for a quick time to market.

Additionally, with the Cloud Inventory mobile platform in place, Fonterra is poised to pursue other efficiency initiatives including Vendor Managed Inventory and Warehouse Management Systems.

Results

Fonterra now has end-to-end traceability throughout its manufacturing processes. With Cloud Inventory’s platform, the company has achieved improved visibility, accuracy, and timeliness of inventory levels and inventory movements.

Employees are able to trace products in a matter of minutes instead of hours. “We’ve made substantial time savings with the Cloud Inventory solution,” said Ormond. “A recent search that previously would’ve taken hours yielded results in only ten minutes.”

Industry

Consumer Package Goods

Food & Beverage

ERP: JD Edwards World

Highlights

• Reduced item tracking time

• Increased inventory accuracy

• Improved regulatory compliance

• Complete traceability