Berner Food & Beverage
Case Study: Berner Food & Beverage
Solution: Ross CDC ERP
Industry: Food & Beverage-Dairy Products
Country: U.S.A.
About The Company
Berner Foods is a market leading supplier of quality food products, including natural cheese, specialty performance cheese, processed cheese and soy beverages. With entrepreneurial beginnings as a Swiss cheese maker dating back 60 years, the company offers leading edge products to the supermarket, drug, mass merchandiser, club, dollar store, specialty food distributor, foodservice and contract manufacturing channels. Berner offers the fullest range of packaging and process options in the industry. Its facilities are USDA and AIB approved and ISO 9001 certified and meet the demanding standards of virtually every major retailer in North America.
Challenges
As a food manufacturer, Berner needed to meet evolving regulatory and customer requirements for food safety and quality. As a result of Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) and increased regulatory scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other government agencies, Berner needed a proven system to ensure compliance with numerous diff erent regulations, such as the Bioterrorism Act of 2002. In addition, the company needed a broad-reaching technology infrastructure with the flexibility to help the company enter new markets, such as consumer packaged goods, all while supporting Berner’s lean manufacturing practices. As a private
label manufacturer, Berner constantly battles tight margins, necessitating maximum effi ciency, visibility and productivity in its manufacturing operations.
Solution
To successfully manage these challenges, Berner turned to Ross Enterprise’s ERP Solution. Ross’ expertise in serving food processors ensured that Ross ERP met Berner's specific needs such as quality control, regulatory compliance, food safety and profit margin improvement. Ross ERP also provided the technology foundation needed by a rapidly growing private-label manufacturer. Finally, Ross’ focus on mid-market manufacturers and, in particular, small and medium-sized businesses met Berner’s need for a rapid implementation with minimal customization throughout the life of the applications.
“The implementation team was experienced and well-versed in working with food processors, so we had short and painless implementations and faster time-to-benefit,” said Troy Grove, Director of Business Technology for Berner Foods. Berner began its relationship with Ross with the implementation of Ross ERP for its manufacturing operations, quality control, supplier management, financials and regulatory management. Later in the year, the company upgraded the underlying Ross technology foundation to include Ross’ Internet Application Framework, with no disruption to application users. This upgrade provided Berner with a Web-based infrastructure as the standard for all Ross applications, eliminating client-installed software and enabling browser-based access for users. Six months later, Berner moved from a one to three shift operation and added Ross ERP Data Collection to gain access to real-time data accurately depicting the manufacturing cycle and improving visibility into inventory and production processes. Finally, in an effort to better serve its customers, Berner added Ross CRM to ensure that customer demand was being accurately captured and to improve communication between the sales and production teams.
Results
Ross ERP has given Berner the tools needed to meet the food safety requirements of the federal government, as well as all of its customers. With the functionality of Ross ERP, Berner fully complies with the record keeping and traceback requirements of the Bioterrorism Act of 2002. The lot traceability, recipe management and quality control applications provide the data and functionality required by Section 306 of the Act. This level of accountability and tracking, which includes the source and movement of all raw materials, the process by which product was produced and destinations where all product was shipped, is a fundamental part of Ross ERP. With this comprehensive solution, conducting mock recalls at Berner went from an entire day to 30 minutes.
“The food manufacturing specific functionality is a must, since we need to meet FDA and HACCP regulations and strict quality control mandates from our customers,” said Grove. “We are already in a position to comply with the Bioterrorism Act as well. Attribute tracking in Ross ERP allows us to monitor quality and product attributes uniquely for each batch or lot, and make sure that we are delivering products that will meet the expectations of each customer. With full lot tracing, we can determine the disposition of any raw ingredient, throughout production and distribution of all finished products, and quickly contain the scope of a potential recall.”
In addition, Ross ERP has allowed Berner to remain a competitive option for grocery retailers by creating new efficiencies critical in private label manufacturing. The company has reduced overall costs by 5 percent through increased production throughput, facility consolidation, improved product quality and more robust inventory tracking capabilities. Berner has also built stronger relationships with its customers through improved product quality and increased on time delivery. Berner has reduced stock outs by 99 percent, and customer complaints due to quality issues have gone down dramatically. Berner has also increased inventory visibility and accuracy and improved inventory tracking through the use of Ross ERP Data Collection. By automating manual operations with bar code scanning, the company went from having a 14-hour lag time between completing a production cycle and updating the inventory, to a real-time process, enabling product to get to customers faster and more efficiently. In addition, Berner can now locate product in its warehouse in real-time, compared to the 30 minute to one hour window required before, and total product review has been reduced from three days to four hours.
In addition to the business benefits afforded by the Ross applications, Berner has also leveraged the Internet Application Framework to reduce system administration and maintenance overhead by 96 percent. With server based maintenance, upgrades are now measured in hours instead of days and system enhancements installed on the server are instantly available. Users now have personalized browser based interfaces that provide secure access to all of Berner’s enterprise systems from any PC with an Internet connection.”
