When overall costs of production increase for a dairy producer, they need to measure, evaluate and monitor production efficiently.
It's vital that the dairy producer's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system puts as much ‘stock’ in the units of measure of key items, as they do.
To do this, an ERP system needs to maintain a base unit of measure (such as a case or tote) and an alternate unit of measure (such as pounds). There are many benefits of the alternate unit of measure, including:
- Looking at all finished goods at per alternate (pound) cost for analytics
- Being able to price finished good items, not at the base, but at the alternate (pound)
The dairy producer may need the alternate quantities recorded by the user on every transaction line that the item is entered. This requirement is sometimes referred to as "catch weight". Also, because the user is entering this key information, the ERP system should assist the dairy producer by checking for a +/- "tolerance" on the quantity entered.
For example, a finished good item is set with:
- Base unit (case)
- Alternate unit (pounds - set as 10, on average)
- Catch weight (yes)
- Tolerance (5%)
When the user (or auto-feed from a scale) enters a weight for that case, the ERP system should be checking the validity. Entering 15 pounds should cause the ERP system to trigger a warning about the alternate unit amount being +/- over tolerance.
Units of measure are an important aspect for the dairy producer. As a Solution Consultant, it's important to consider their needs and match them correctly with the right ERP system.
To learn more about industry-specific ERP software for dairy producers, download the ERP for Dairy fact sheet.
