Poultry and Egg are the fastest growing protein markets but will face stiff competition in coming years from plant-based protein. Feed conversion ratio continues to improve and boneless breast meat yield continues to increase. Challenges include avian influenza and how to increase global exports. Consumer preference for responsible husbandry, organics, and free-range counters the trend of high volume egg farmers shifting to confined poultry operations. The global pandemic forced revised processing protocols which slowed slaughter and processing rates.
These trends and the corresponding shifting demand mean that your organization must be flexible and agile to deliver innovative products timed to market needs, all while managing costs and risk.
The Adroit team helps organizations to improve their agility. Our team works to understand your specific operational challenges, jointly craft solutions that incorporate best practices, leverage your existing software assets, and where necessary implement Adroit’s software solutions.
Working with Adroit, you are better positioned to efficiently create and produce products in response to newer trends.
Looking Deeper – Poultry Processing Operational Challenges
Poultry processors manage a range of operations, as they convert live birds to raw poultry products fit for human consumption. In the USA Poultry processors are under the jurisdiction of the USDA.
The first stage of poultry processing includes: execute the slaughter, eviscerate, clean and chill, and test the birds. The chilling is necessary to prevent bacterial growth which can occur if the poultry is between 40 °F and 140 °F. Once chilled, the carcass is ready for secondary processing which includes cutting, deboning, and packaging.
From there the packaged poultry can be sent via cold chain logistics to several markets including to grocery stores, restaurants, distribution centers, or to other food processors.
Secondary processors convert raw chilled or frozen poultry into a range of products. Secondary processing may include additional cutting, grinding, cooking, adding spices, adding flavors, and adding additional ingredients.
Secondary poultry processing typically includes work orders that combine ingredients and parts and fractionate in which parts are cut into sub-streams. All this tracking complexity is handled via lot control tracking in combination with work orders. Production yield is a key performance indicator that directly drives the margin of meat processing.
Factors that can impact yield include the initial cuts, varying fat content requiring the addition of higher fat content pieces, drop off, loss and addition of moisture, overly conservative packaging over/underweight fills.
Functional Advances Provided by Poultry ERP Software
To minimize waste and improve operations, poultry software systems and process capability must support lot traceability, recipes including formulation and process steps, GFSI and FSMA compliance support, by-products, co-products, catch weights, and expiration management.
Poultry processing is complex, and so is maintaining traceability record keeping. Poultry management software can play a role in improving your operations, but it is more than a matter of implementing technology.
Adroit can help you to capture solve those problems, migrate the spreadsheet-based recipes and formulas into a formal system, and help you to get control of your costs, yields, production, and inventory challenges. We can help you solve your production and inventory control challenges with the application of best practices, optimizing your existing systems, or through the implementation of an Adroit software solution.
Poultry Processing Industry Solutions for Improved Operations
Whether it is crafting targeted solutions to specific operational issues or helping to improve the processes of the entire supply chain, Adroit understands the unique challenges of poultry processing.
Poultry processing can be complex, and the challenge is to streamline operations while managing cost and maximizing food safety and compliance. The manufacturing process is typically a combination of front-end batch processes and continuous runs producing discrete units. As poultry processing operations scale up and the number of unique formulations and packaging configurations increase, so does the operational management challenge.
In many cases, we can help understand how a poultry processing oriented ERP system in combination with a Supply Chain Planning system can be leveraged to meet key challenges, including:
- Developing cohesive sales, operations, and finance plan (SOP Planning) with accurate forecasts, production capacities, inventory inclusive of distribution pipeline and planned expiration, and financial metrics.
- Shifting formulations and recipes to an online system when spreadsheets become unmanageable.
- Integrating insights into production including yield challenges, bottlenecks, and downtime
- Determining trends across batches and production runs.
- Eliminating manual and labor-intensive traceability through the application of meat traceability software.
- Integrate the record-keeping and document management challenges into ERP software
- Improving work-in-process visibility and inventory tracking through the application of a meat inventory tracking system
- Assessing your poultry management software system fit to the required batch and continuous processes
- Complying with GFSI food safety schema, such as SQF, supported by independent record-keeping and plans
Poultry processing software and other key business systems all have a role in helping to modernize operations. When properly aligned with overall strategy, these systems help manage complex traceability and record-keeping mandates.
Adroit brings industry experience to each engagement and takes the time to understand the specifics of your meat operations. We can help you migrate the spreadsheet-based recipes and formulas into a formal system, and help you to get control of your costs, yields, production, and inventory challenges.