A greater number of reported health incidents due to poor labeling, cross-contamination, and false ingredient declaration across the global supply chain has led to increasing regulation. For example, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), with respect to Foreign Supplier Verification Programs for imports, the setting of a minimum recall standard of 4 hours, and the power to perform a mandatory recall, means food and beverage manufacturers have to change the way they manage their business on a daily basis. They have to run faster and better to stay in business. Maintaining and changing your current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) is one thing, but changing your current ERP landscape may be necessary to meet the regulatory demands of today and also of the future.

If you are looking to replace your current solution(s), below are the top 10 requirements you should be adding to your ERP selection checklist:

  • Ingredient Declaration and Allergens: calculate nutritional and allergen data, and record supplier certificates and specification data for Halal, Kosher, and Bio categories
  • Batch Traceability and Recall: simple and easy-to-use forward and backward tracking to understand and answer all your batch-related questions
  • Batch Date and Quality Status Control: shelf life, expiry date, and inspection dates to reduce stock write-offs and obsolescence and increase business profits, and status control to block batches from being consumed or sold
  • Material Consumption: based on a FIFO and/or FEFO basis, and in high-volume production, backflush traceable products
  • Quality Control: manage pre-production, in-process, and post-production quality control checks, batch and serial re-testing, and purchase Goods Receipts to increase product quality and safety
  • Recipe Management: create percentage-based recipes to include scrap and yield, and co-product, by-product, and scrap management to manage product variation as a result of the production process
  • Yield Planning and Analysis: build planned yield percentages and the method for calculating actual yield into your recipe
  • Complaint Management: centralize customer, supplier, and internal business Complaints in your ERP system, for analysis and business process integration with product returns, financial credits, and quality processes
  • Scheduling: optimize the factory based on an allergen vs. non-allergen production plan, while keeping to customer delivery dates
  • Certificate of Analysis: print general and customer-specific certificate of analysis documents for the same batch