ERP FOR COFFEE: DATA COLLECTION

ERP for coffee and tea manufacturing industry is flexible, adaptable, secure, and cost-effective.

For coffee roasters alike, data collection not only improves profits, but it improves the efficiency, and quality of your end-user’s work.  With a significant decrease in computer and data acquisition hardware costs, and an increase in software specialized for coffee roasting operations, it’s easier than ever to collect essential data. Whether it’s sourcing, product development, production, quality assurance, or sales, the data is readily available.

Essential Data for Coffee & Tea Manufacturers

There are four distinct categories of data that are useful for roasting operations:

Roast Data – Collect temperature measurements over time, control changes performed, and the amount of time it takes for temperature to pass through relevant temperature ranges. Furthermore, calculate rate of change or the difference between measurements taken in different parts of the roaster, and/or other sensor data – such as color, air pressure, or velocity – can also be recorded, if your equipment has that option.

• • Using an ERP for data collection, rather than recording it manually, is one of the easiest and most significant improvements that can be made in a roasting operation.

Production Data – Information on green coffee purchases, as well as details such as: who roasted a batch, when it was roasted, how much of a particular green coffee was used, and how much of a particular roasted coffee was produced are recorded here.

However, one challenge facing specialty coffee roasters is how to balance production efficiency with product freshness. Tracking production data makes it easier to decide on optimal batch sizes based on current and recent demand for each coffee. Variation in percent weight loss can help identify which batches might deserve extra scrutiny in quality assurance or who might benefit from additional training. Additionally, if a coffee is roasted in multiple ways or used in blends, understanding demand from these different products is useful for creating purchasing plans.

• • Storing this information in an ERP solution enables a wide range of reports and projections. It can also simplify audits that might be required by third party certifications.

Lab Data – An analysis performed on the green, roasted, or finished product. This can include: cupping forms, green grading forms, physical measurements such as moisture content, bulk density, color, ground particle size distribution, triangulation cuppings, comparisons of brewed coffee against a sensory specification, and more.

Post-roast analysis is key to ensuring that the coffee matches your intentions, as well as diagnosing the cause of any variations or failures. Remember that green coffee storage conditions or duration can require roasting or blend adjustments over time. Grind quality affects extraction in brewing. Packaging equipment can fail in ways that compromise packaging integrity.

• • Regularly testing finished products and comparing test results over time makes it possible to correct problems before they reach a customer.

Sales Data – Who buys what? How often are purchases made? Is there some kind of promotion or event happening that might skew sales?

A baseline understanding of what your customers are buying means you can observe trends due to demographic shifts and seasonal variations. It also allows you to measure the impact of changes to a product line, different events, and promotions.

In turn, this makes it easier to make product line adjustments over time, plan promotions and events to improve sales, and build realistic contingency into purchasing plans – something that will help you lessen the impact of events outside of your control, such as port delays, without over-committing on any of the coffees you purchase.

Data Management – ERP data management solutions are business-led tools that create a single master record of all business processes and operations, including people and systems from various internal and external applications and sources.

The master data serves as a reliable and accurate source of business-critical information that can be managed and shared across the enterprise to make robust decisions. It also helps reduce errors, eliminate redundancy and facilitate reporting capabilities.

Most organizations employ different systems that contain information on customers, products, sales, transactions and more, leading to data silos and an incomplete, disjointed view of critical information.

Since the data is stored in many different locations, it is hard to answer important questions like ‘Which products do our customers use the most?’ or ‘Who is the most profitable customer?’ So, it is imperative to employ a system to ensure consistent data visibility and enforce best practices to maintain integrity and quality.

Your Next Steps

When you team up with ACC Software Solution’s premier team of consultants, you’ll receive a team of experts committed to following ERP best practices, from selection to end user training.

Find out why manufacturing centers across the United States have come to us for over 25 years to execute their software projects—contact ACC Software Solutions today!