Avara Foods Information
“We needed a system to grow with us. Integreater could do that”
Avara Foods is a leading UK food business delivering quality fresh and convenience food solutions to the UK retail and food service sectors. With a turnover of more than £500m, it is one of Britain’s largest privately owned businesses and currently employs over 3,500 highly talented people across the country.
Avara manages its entire supply chain; from an extensive farm network to state of the art processing and distribution facilities. The business has grown both organically and through acquisition, and as it acquired other businesses it also acquired other systems. This growth proved to be the catalyst for its further strategic investment decisions in technology.
Philip Davidson, Avara’s Operations Director explained.
“When we were making investment decisions in our new 100,000 sq ft facility, this also became the kick start for us to look for a new production management system that we could then embed across our facilities. We needed a pure software solution that we could use right across our estate, which would sit on top of whatever hardware was appropriate for the environments.
“We’ve got multi spaces focused on primary processing, further processing and convenience processing as well, so we needed a specifically designed system that could sit over this equipment. It was also important for us that if we were going to make such an investment in a system, it was able to grow and grow with us across our estate.
We felt that Systems Integration could do that.” “We needed a pure software solution that we could use right across our estate,such an investment in a system, it was able to grow and grow with us across our estate. We felt that Systems Integration and its Integreater solution could do that.” – Philip Davidson, Operations Director.
As part of the implementation SI designed comprehensive training packages for Avara.
Philip continued, “This meant that our people had the opportunity to become familiar with the product and understanding how it was going to be used. During the first 3-4 weeks, the SI team was on site and whenever we had a glitch or a problem or an unseen event, then they would talk our people through it.”
As Rob Stephens, MD at Systems Integration explained, “We provided one point of entry for the information so they can create a production plan for the day and ensured that when a change is made, for instance for a different product, everything is changed.
The whole point is to reduce the opportunity for errors, reduce lead time and the requirement for tacit knowledge when changes have to be made and to ensure accuracy. We also put in place a QA system that collects and stores information electronically and automatically flags up any issues. It’s a very proactive way of managing QA and ensuring real traceability.”
“We now have much better control and much better visibility. We can schedule every day, we’ve been able to cut down on mistakes made in the factory, it’s cut down on labelling errors, it’s cut down on overruns and all the types of things that cause waste.
” Both paperwork on the shop floor and man hours have also been reduced, as has the amount of waste on administrative tasks. As Gary reports, “The general cost base on finished goods is coming down.”
To find out more about our poultry processing software, food ERP and specialist applications, click on the links.
Watch the video below as Philip Davidson, Operations Director at Faccenda Foods explains why Systems Integration was the best match their business.
“We can schedule every day, we’ve been able to cut down on mistakes made in the factory, labelling errors, overruns and all the types of things that cause waste. Systems Integration is very much a big part of our growth plan now.”
To find out more about our poultry processing software, food ERP and specialist applications, click on the links.
Watch the video below as Philip Davidson, Operations Director at Avara Foods explains why Systems Integration was the best match their business.
Faccenda Foods
