Leading bakery equipment manufacturer Macadams Baking Systems will become one of the first companies in South Africa to implement IMPACT Encore Version 5.0, the latest ERP offering from Syspro.
Glenn Price, information systems manager of Macadams Baking Systems, says the company is very excited about the release of Version 5.0. "Plans for implementation are already under way, and we expect to go live in the near future. We will also be implementing MRP II in early 2002."
Africa's largest manufacturer and supplier of bakery and confectionery ovens and equipment, Macadams has a head office in Cape Town and branches throughout the country. It supplies many of South Africa's major retail stores and franchise operations and exports up to 45% of its production.
"IMPACT Encore has become a complete management tool for our business. The main benefit is the system integration of all modules, providing online data for daily reporting and forecast planning," Price says.
"We are particularly looking forward to the extended reporting functionality of Version 5.0, as well as the integration with the Microsoft suite of products. The MS Word printing capability and office automation integration with e-mailing and faxing will deliver great benefits and cost savings to our organisation."
Macadams produces up to 70 rotary rack ovens per month, the most popular of which is the Falcon 3. This oven can bake up to 180 standard loaves of bread every 30 minutes. As well as rotary rack ovens, Macadams also manufactures a range of other ovens and equipment such as deck ovens, pizza ovens, spiral kneaders, moulders and provers.
According to Price, the company initially chose IMPACT because it needed a fully integrated system that would handle financial, manufacturing and distribution. "We wanted a system which would allow us to monitor our business processes on a live basis, whether it be our work in progress in the factory, current stock holding, value of outstanding purchase orders or, most importantly, our sales," he says.
Macadams is currently running a 48-user licence of IMPACT Encore 4.0. The system is supported by Enterprise Outsourcing Holdings' Cape Town office.
"IMPACT Encore contains strong manufacturing modules for the core of our business, and runs well over a wide area network - an essential factor as we have four remote sales branches around the country with their own distribution warehouses," Price points out.
"We are using the Time and Attendance and Shop Floor Data Collection modules very successfully in our manufacturing division. This has been running for some time now and we are beginning to see the benefits of this integrated system. It has helped us tremendously in our costing of certain products. We will soon have accurate costing on our entire range of products."
A leading ERP software manufacturer, Syspro's IMPACT Encore product is used and supported in more than 50 countries around the world. Product-wide support for the creation of XML documents (supported by built-in XSL style sheets to make such documents suitable for rendering in a web browser) has been included in IMPACT Encore Version 5.0. The company is currently working towards the implementation of XML (and XBRL) support in the General Ledger Financial Report Writer in a future release.
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