BUSINESS SOFTWARE
backboneis key to success for Jackson’s
New technology
Kennedy’s Bakery Production reports on how Jackson’s Bakery was able to successfully overhaul its IT systems to allow it to take on a new project that represented a 30% rise in production and distribution requirements.
J
ackson’s Bakery (part of the William Jackson’s Food Group – WJFG) has been a UK-based supplier of sandwich bread for over 100 years. In 2021 it had signed an ambitious long-term deal to supply a significant UK convenience retailer with its own label sliced bread
range. However, this new deal represented a significant uplift of around 30% in production and distribution requirements and Jackson’s legacy IT systems would be unable to cope with this new level of business growth. In order to meet the demands of the new
deal, Jackson’s quickly realised it would need to undergo a transformation project to overhaul its existing technology and supply chain. Working in partnership with Columbus, Jackson’s selected a new integrated Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management ERP solution to act as its technology backbone.
This proved vital
to enable the company to modernise key processes throughout the business – from order to invoice, including procurement, EDI automation, advanced forecasting, production planning, material consumption and despatch. The scope of the project was huge. The new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform implementation needed to be deployed and go-live in parallel with the introduction of a new distribution and fulfilment centre, an extensive programme of factory refurbishments, to enable the needed
20 Kennedy’s Bakery Production April/May 2024
capacity ramp-up and significant new product development and product launches. Despite ongoing issues due to the Covid-19 pandemic and supply chain disruptions, the implementation needed to be complete before commencement of the new supply contract began. This left Columbus and Jackson’s with a non-negotiable hard deadline – a challenge at any time for a business-wide ERP implementation, let alone for a project that needed to constantly adjust its scope in line
with the wider manufacturing and supply chain changes that were happening at the time.
Overcoming restrictions
Given the pandemic restrictions that were in place at the time of the project, both Columbus and Jackson’s needed to adapt their approaches to meet the demands of the project, harnessing a hybrid approach to design, development and deployment, which allowed for a greater amount of parallel
bakeryproduction.co.uk
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