SPC Ardmona pick planning solution

SPC Ardmona has selected Infor SCM Advanced Planning to help it gain greater visibility of its operational performance and expenditure. It plans to use this new insight to optimise its Australian fruit production operations and improve customer service.

Until now, much of the plant management and strategic planning at SPC Ardmona has been conducted manually using Excel spread sheets. However, as the business expands and increases, the volume of variable factors from the cost of production, labour and freight, to the various seasonal fruit cycles can no longer effectively be juggled manually.

SPC Ardmona wanted an easy-to-use but highly flexible planning and modelling solution that could support its decisions and activities at both a strategic and tactical level.

Its strategic priority was to remodel the business for optimum productivity. This required greater visibility of operations at the plant level, specifically an accurate insight into production costs at each level and location across the business.

Its key tactical requirement was the ability to proactively determine the start and end of the various fruit processing seasons in order to be able to direct better use of labour, resources and capital at its Goulburn Valley plants. This involved being able to ask a wide range of what if questions that trade-off labour costs against fruit degradation and storage costs, and also factor in market demand and other economic conditions that affect production.

SPC Ardmona also wanted to provide the best service to its customers through ensuring all sales demands are covered. This required having visibility into changing customer needs, and also the granular understanding of its operations, enabling managers to drive costs out of production.

The company chose Infor SCM AP for its performance in the agriculture-business market, where it has impressed industry executives for its ability to manage the intricacies of seasons and harvests, helping organisations balance short-term supply versus long-term demand. Infor AP was also viewed as having superior flexibility in its modelling capabilities.

Mike McCormack, corporate planning manager at SPC Ardmona, said: We were impressed with the performance and ease of use of Infor AP during our pilot phase. It immediately demonstrated the ability to deliver on our first-up requirements a tactical model to help optimise our current facilities and drive cost out of the business.

The solution will be rolled out in 2007.