Vita-Pakt Citrus Products Co.

Transcription

1 CASE STUDY Vita-Pakt Citrus Products Co.

2 Customer Profile Vita-Pakt Citrus Products Co., based in Covina, California and founded in 1957, is a vertically integrated processor of citrus and kiwi fruit products and is dedicated to the production of the highest quality natural ingredients for food and beverage manufacturers around the world. Their signature products include frozen orange and lemon peel items mainstay ingredients in the baking industry. For the spice, tea, brewing, and other food industries, Vita-Pakt makes single strength, not-from-concentrate juices, all natural juice concentrates, beverage bases, citrus oils, purees, and specialty citrus peel products from dried and milled granules. Aside from their headquarters and a distribution center for frozen products located in Covina, Vita-Pakt has a manufacturing facility in Lindsay, CA where they produce frozen peel and blended products and concentrates. The company also owns a dehydrator in Del Rey, CA and a dry milling operation in Fresno, where dried products such as orange and lemon peel is turned into spices as well as used in product such as Belgian-style wheat beer and herbal teas. The Challenge A driver in Vita-Pakt s search for an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system was the need to move to an integrated system away from inefficient systems that required manual entry of data, and employees running their own spreadsheets that didn t tie production data to processing data. Accessibility to data by everyone in the company was also important to Vita-Pakt, says plant manager Robert Naugle. Item traceability was another key consideration; they required the ability to track product both forward and backward in the supply chain, and to conduct mock product recalls for third-party audits. The full JustFoodERP implementation was rolled out across four manufacturing locations in different parts of California. 1

3 The Solution Operations drove the ERP system search and implementation at Vita-Pakt, says Naugle, who was project lead with a core team of about half a dozen employees, including his manager, the Senior VP Operations, as executive sponsor. Naugle and his team quickly identified that Microsoft Dynamics ERP was the way for us to go and they narrowed their search down to JustFoodERP and another Dynamics-based vendor. The main thing for us was the level of relationship that JustFoodERP has with Microsoft how the JustFoodERP system is completely integrated and compatible with Microsoft now and down the road, says Naugle. As well, we decided that the functionality in JustFoodERP fits us better than the other ERP vendors. Vita-Pakt representatives attended the 2010 JustFoodERP User Event in Dallas, TX, which included a plant tour of CF Chefs, a JustFoodERP customer. Naugle and his coworkers were impressed by seeing JustFoodERP in action and how it was benefiting another food processor. To start their ERP project, Vita-Pakt ran a test environment of JustFoodERP from production through purchasing, including the quality management module and the reporting module for six months at their Lindsay, CA plant before rolling out the full implementation across all their company s locations. Microsoft Dynamics CRM integrates with JustFoodERP so they can push a button and within seconds, automated s go to thousands of customers contained in the contacts management side of CRM, making a huge difference in item traceability and recalls. 2

4 The Benefits Naugle says Vita-Pakt has seen increased efficiencies and productivity, resulting in cost savings, since the go-live date of their JustFoodERP system. We use the item trace functionality quite a bit for recall purposes and for ongoing information gathering, he says. Vita-Pakt is now working with JustFoodERP to implement the customer relationship management (CRM) module. One of the selling points of CRM, says Naugle, is with the push of a single button, and within 30 seconds automated s and letters are going out to customers notifying them of recalled items. When you have thousands of customers, as Vita-Pakt does, being able to set up a template within the ERP system and have it speak to the contacts management side of the CRM system makes a huge difference in the item trace and recall process. Among the accomplishments, Vita-Pakt was the first JustFoodERP customer to go live with the Role Tailored Client (RTC) feature of Microsoft Dynamics when it was released in This feature is helping users at Vita-Pakt focus on their tasks by tailoring their application experience to the needs of their roles at work. Most of our users input their daily information in RTC, which has highly customized screens for each user, notes Naugle. Naugle says he is also seeing the benefit of reporting within the JustFoodERP system. JustFoodERP staff provided excellent training and support for this. I would definitely recommend JustFoodERP to another food company, says Naugle. JustFoodERP employees are knowledgeable and responsive from pre-sales through to implementation and customer support I like that I have access to the top people at JustFoodERP. The main thing was the level of relationship JustFoodERP has with Microsoft Dynamics they are completely integrated, compatible with Microsoft now and down the road. Robert Naugle, Plant Manager, Vita-Pakt Citrus Products Co. 3

5 The Future Vita-Pakt has moved on to implement JF Floor, the web interface module that extends JustFoodERP functionality through their warehouse and plant workers handheld scanners, forklift-mounted tablets or any other portable device that accesses a browser running over a wireless network. All our finished products will be containerized, says Naugle. As the goods come off production, on pallets, they get tracked by container number using JF Floor. The payoff, he adds is that We ll get more real-time information on output. Vita-Pakt enjoys keeping up to date on JustFoodERP developments, such as the educational sessions that Naugle and his coworkers attended at the 2012 JustFoodERP User Event, looking at the product roadmap and learning more about reporting, JF Floor and other functionalities that integrate with their JustFoodERP system. Solution Summary JustFoodERP and Microsoft Dynamics Locations: California Covina, Lindsay, Fresno, and Del Rey; warehouse locations in various parts of the U.S. Implemented Modules: Financials; Production; Quality Management; CRM; Warehouse Management; JF Floor; Purchasing; Reporting 4