Food and beverage companies are under constant inventory stress, much more than other CPG industries. You’re looking at strict control and safety requirements, limited shelf lives, increased regulatory scrutiny, and much more.
It’s time to get the warehouse support you need to keep things rolling and customers happy, but not just any old system will do. Today, there are food and beverage WMS tools available that know your industry and requirements, simplifying your reporting, delivery, production, and fulfillment needs.
To help you select the right WMS, we’ve taken a look at five essential considerations for food and beverage companies looking to build out their tech stack.
1. Smart Record Keeping Food and beverage inventory controls are your best option to protect your business. Keeping records and responding to changes or issues can help you avoid spoilage, expiration, and other conditions that ruin products or generate hazardous situations.
Our food and beverage WMS is designed to monitor and record all of your products based on their specific needs, showing that items have remained in safe conditions throughout your production, supply chain, and delivery to the final customer. Plus, you can automate actions like reports and alerts when something is outside of defined parameters.
Immediate notifications of temperature rise for a crate or pallet ensures a safe lifecycle for your operations and can help you maintain compliance. No matter who needs the data, we’ll help you track it, record it, and provide it.
2. Advanced Sensor Support Food and beverage WMS support must be heavily tailored to your products and supply chain, especially if you take on some of the manufacturing efforts yourself. Features that companies like yours should look for must include traceability and tracking to manage expiry dates and unique requirements at every location in your operation.
Tracking temperature data from the dock to the cooler and then out the door onto refer trucks is necessary to keep your products, customers, and reputation safe. In the digital world, many partners also request this data, so your food and beverage WMS should use EDI and other data technologies to make sensor information capture and sharing simple.
We’ll help you track and protect all of your goods with sensor and other data support, and then move you a step further with all of your retail compliance needs such as labeling, documentation, GS1, and more.
3. Corrective and Preventive Process Tools Food facilitates, including many warehouses, are required to have systems that keep product inventory safe. The FDA breaks down these requirements along categories such as hazard analysis, corrective and preventative actions, and many conditional elements that point to specific hazards around food, its processing, and storage.
Food and beverage WMS tools should be able to help you maintain these policies and demonstrate them to regulators. The FDA looks for evidence that can be contained in reports, which Made4net makes easy to generate and review.
If you determine a new corrective action to be taken and tracked, our platform is there to help you implement it and record it. Real-time supply chain visibility that we provide can also be used to support your QA activities, especially for inventory management, shipping, FIFO, and overall recordkeeping.
4. Unique SKU and Retail Tools Expanding your business often requires working with retailers to develop specific offerings and shipments. Sometimes that can be a custom packaging or kit that combines multiple products, while others may want different shipment sizes or quantities for distinct locations.
Tracking such requirements across each customer location and managing them manually introduces significant chances for errors. And, in these cases, mistakes can mean returned products and shipments, delays in fulfillment, and angry phone calls.
Let us help you avoid all of that with retail automation tools that are flexible enough to adapt to each customer’s needs and dynamic to respond to the problems or challenges that can arise each day. We’ll give you the tools needed to develop and track unique SKUs and product combinations without missing an inventory beat.
5. Multiple Distribution Deployments When one of your competitors fails to deliver on time, you want customers to turn to you to pick up the slack and help that retailer avoid empty shelves. Being flexible to your customers’ needs and partner demands can help you maintain a reputation as a reliable partner who can fill gaps that unexpectedly arise.
Made4net’s food and beverage WMS provides you with dynamic routing and transport management tools that integrate with flexible inventory allocation rules, making it easy for you to see what you have and can mobilize at a moment’s notice. Prioritize immediate needs while still meeting your standard and expected order volumes.
Plus, our inventory tools ensure that you’re restocking with plenty of lead time, allowing you to scale up and reduce stockout concerns.
Food and beverage companies deserve a WMS that gives them some of the most potent tools available, while keeping dashboards and reporting easy for everyone to see and understand. Make the most of your inventory and be the best partner in your supply chain by adding Made4net’s WMS solutions today.
Ready to learn more? Contact Made4net for a free demo using food and beverage data.
