Product Reviewed: ProducePak Farm ERP
Why ProducePak?ProducePak has a long history of implementing projects in regions across both developed and developing regions. In particular, because this document concentrates on emerging markets, developing regions include Kenya, South Africa, Guatemala, and Egypt. New projects in 2010 include Ghana, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria.
ProducePak consultants have great experience with projects in developing regions making difficult projects successful ones.
The ProducePak solution helps to enforce international standards very quickly where the users of the system have little or no experience with computers or implementing food production, safety, and best practices in horticulture businesses.
In many cases, the ProducePak solution has been very successful during implementation where the users being trained have no experience at all with computers. A core feature of ProducePak is that the system “guides” the user through the best practice processes for safe and efficient food production.
ProducePak expert consultants provide ongoing support to clients in the form of email, phone, remote, and onsite training services; and also upgrades to the software every three months which will include new features, reports, and industry facilities to ensure international standards are always supported by ProducePak.
The on-site training process provides an expert ProducePak consultant that will manage the entire installation, configuration, deployment, and training for the project. This ensures a high degree of success for the project, and provides the best possible results and speed for the project.
Case Studies
To review case studies from developing regions using ProducePak, use this link http://www.producepak.com/pdf2/producepak-case-study-egypt.pdf
To review case studies from developed regions using ProducePak, click on this link http://www.producepak.com/pdf2/producepak-case-study.pdf
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Benefits from ProducePak Farm ERPThe following is a list of benefits from ProducePak Farm ERP systems.
• Improved management of production activity monitoring and budgeting
• Be alerted to deviations in budgets immediately
• Better planning of resources used in the production process results in higher cash flow utilisation and profit enhancement
• Automatic traceability systems reduce paperwork and staff time spent documenting chemical and spray application activities
• Inventory management reduces shrinkage and allows easy stock-taking; improving cash flow utilisation by maximising usage of on hand resources
• Compliance for; and Audits of HACCP, EurepGAP, GlobalGAP, ISO and other standards become easier and quicker by allowing auditors access to traceability systems
• For large businesses, central production management can easily monitor multiple farm sites from once central location; saving time, and improving management response to any issues in the production process
• Pre/Post Harvest Interval (PHI), Withholding Period management stops staff from harvesting product that is still within a holding period after the application of spray chemicals; potentially reducing the possibility of losses due to a recall or rejection of produce due to chemical residue issues
Other Benefits from ProducePak Farm ERP
• Easy recording of farm activities
• Easily assess the status of all outstanding farm activities from one central location
• Take rapid corrective action where tasks are missed or performed incorrectly
• Increased accuracy of traceability
• Capture HACCP, EurepGAP, GlobalGAP, ISO x, BCA, FarmCare information
• Increased control over materials used during production processes results in improved cash flow
• Automatic enforcement of PHI & withholding periods
• Increased control over inventory allows the business to reduce inventory waste and misappropriation; and improves profitability
• Enhanced inventory control allows the business to better manage the quantity of materials on hand, resulting in improved cash flow
• Rapid access to levels of production inventory on hand at any time; at each site and storage location
• Easy re-ordering of inventory
• Store managers are alerted when items need re-ordering
• When important staff take holidays or need to be replaced, their knowledge of normal operations is retained in ProducePak and can easily be accessed by management and new staff.
• Increase profitability by standardising production practices across the entire business
• Stops production staff from forgetting important tasks, resulting in increased yield and profitability
• Ensures correct quantities and methods are enforced, increasing business profit
• Allows the development and analysis of new production methodologies to improve production efficiency
• Rapidly Identify production mistakes and anomalies for production activities, allowing management to take corrective action; resulting in improved yield and profitability
• Become a ‘lean manufacturer’ by arranging materials and labour resources to be delivered Just In Time, maximising business cash flow
• Detect budget over/under runs immediately and take corrective action, resulting in improved cost control and profitability
• Make financial decisions and improve financial planning based on full budgeting information being available before each season starts
• Remove ‘nasty cash flow’ surprises that may result from a lack of budget planning and monitoring
• Compare profitability of selected production methodologies to choose new production methods; resulting in increased business profitability
• Comprehensive cost control avoids budget blow outs and allows management to be aware of any problems immediately
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Features of Farm ERP
Whilst there are hundreds of features in the Farm ERP solution, the following summarises the main features. Full details of the systems features can be downloaded from these links:
• Farm ERP System Specifications http://www.producepak.com/pdf2/ProducePakFARMMANAGEMENT.pdf
• Farm ERP System Demonstration http://www.producepak.com/pdf2/FarmERPSummaryProducePakSolutions.zip
• Farm ERP Mobile Solution Option http://www.producepak.com/pdf2/ProducePakFARMpda.pdf
Farm ERP Features • Comprehensive production task management for ALL production activities including Spray, Timesheets, Irrigation, Machinery Plant & Equipment Maintenance, Block Inputs, Planting, Harvesting, and more…
• Prepare production budgets prior to the start of each seasons growing, to improve materials, labour, and cash flow planning
• Monitor budgets on a daily basis to identify budget overruns and take corrective action
• Profit reporting down to individual areas of land at any time during and after the production process
• Automatically generate staff tasks and instructions to improve staff management
• Comprehensive activity monitoring systems to identify mistakes and deviations during the production process; allowing management to make corrective actions before incorrect practices or tasks cost produce quality/yield/profit.
• Automatic traceability of materials and labour used in production; instant recall from block, crop, and material inputs
• Comprehensive inventory management to improve resource utilisation and reduce waste includes traceability for inventory batches and integrates automatically with recall and traceability systems. Purchase Order generation, stock takes for multiple sites and depots,
• Mobile Farm Software allows staff to synchronise tasks to the PDA, record tasks and actual material consumption in the field, and then synchronise data with the ProducePak server back in the office; allows central monitoring of all staff activities at all times
• Integrate with Finance Package and Payroll
• Record Spray, Irrigation, Water, Planting, Block Inputs, Harvest, and virtually any task that is performed during production (contractors, soil tests, and more..)
• Plan tasks in advance or enter after they have been performed
• Costs are automatically allocated to each Block/Crop/Plot and area
• Multi-site enabled
• Recording of both Global and Site based overheads
• Automatically maintain traceability of materials used during production & automatic inventory allocation
• Generate staff/team instruction sheets
• View alerts for BHI / withholding periods etc
• Perform production cost analysis for each block
• Maintain labour traceability for all production tasks
• Visual display allows annual, monthly, weekly and daily views of production tasks filtered by selected Farm Site, or , Block, or Crop.
• Create Purchase Orders to acquire inventory
• Receive Inventory functions
• Perform multi-site stock takes, and or multi-depot stock takes
• Authorise the use of inventory from various storage depots
• Unlimited storage depots, at unlimited sites
• Batch number traceability
• Batch number recall processes
• Easy ‘pending delivery’ analysis
• Inventory “Check Out” and “Check In” logging to specific tasks, improves accountability and allows flexible control of inventory
• Easy logging of “evidence of consumption” recording for materials accountability
• Balances of inventory taken by each employee maintains accountability for task based farming activities
• configure the businesses standard production methods specify duration of tasks, materials used, labour used, equipment used
• trail, analyse and compare new production methods
• automatic scheduling of production tasks for each block for the entire season
• Monitor activities during production to compare ‘estimated’ with ‘actual’
• generate entire budgets for each block, before production commences
• trial different production methodologies to fine tune budget and cash flow requirements
• monitor ‘estimated’ and ‘actual’ budget during the production season
• Budgets by: Detail, Item, Category Summary, and Date Range
• Production Costs Reporting
• Production Profit Reporting
For further details on Traceability , Packing Software, Farm Software, Farm ERP, and Food Manufacturing please see:
Farm Packhouse . Farm ERP Farm Management Software Farm Packhouse Case Study Farm ERP ProducePakBIM Traceability Portal CCP Packhouse Software Crop Management Software Crop Traceability Farm Systems Food Traceability News Packing Solutions Farming Software Packhouse Management Farm ERP QTrace
