Supply chain management/process manufacturing: Welch Foods to use Oracle tracking solution with Sierra Atlantic
Patrick Burnson -- Executive Editor -- Logistics Management, 10/9/2009
SAN FRANCISCO —On the eve of Oracle’s “OpenWorld” annual conference, a significant supply chain deal was struck between Sierra Atlantic Inc. and Welch Foods Inc.
Welch, a cooperative comprising the world's leading producer of grape juice, grape jelly, and other fruit-based products made from Concord and Niagara grapes, has completed a six-week project leveraging Oracle's Process Manufacturing (OPM) solution for lot genealogy. Additionally Welch's has signed a two-year contract for ongoing support (both onsite and offshore) for Oracle-based process manufacturing, human resources and finance solutions.
“Welch’s IT group has an OPM team but we needed a deeper level of expertise to solve a difficult problem involving lot genealogy,” said Ray Gosselin, CIO, Welch's. “We made an organizational shift five years ago to Oracle’s solutions and needed to work with a team that understands Oracle software from the inside out; Sierra Atlantic was the only choice because of their history partnering with Oracle to develop the very software we are using.”
According to spokesmen, Welch’s came to Sierra Atlantic because it initially took as long as 24 hours to run the data intensive lot tracking report; turnaround that is too long for the level of quality assurance and trace recall capability the company required.
With Sierra Atlantic’s help Welch's can now understand the entire history of a lot in less than two hours. Lot genealogy allows Welch's to track a specific raw material lot number and, in the event of a recall or quality issue, leverage the technology to protect their customers and ultimatelyits brand equity.
G.K. Murthy, senior vice president, enterprise solutions, Sierra Atlantic, said that the opportunity to work with Welch’s first on just the lot genealogy project, was a good start.
He added that the company hopes to “grow” that relationship into a longer contract.
“Which is typical of the way we've been able to grow our business in spite of a tough economy,” he said.
The Next Generation Supply Chain
10/11/2009Extended supply chain is becoming a reality
01/31/2001
View All On-Demand Webcasts