Aptean Food & Beverage ERP Success Story: Green Valley Pecan Company

Transcript:

Green Valley Pecan is the second-largest pecan grower in the world. We are the sixth or the seventh-largest processor of pecans in the world. The question comes to us a lot is how long will a pecan tree produce nuts? We don't know how long the lifespan of a pecan tree is because pecan trees have only been cultivated for approximately two hundred years, because they're native to North and Central America.

We have a process called vac-pack process and it was very labor-intensive for the user in the computer system. One of the things that we did is we reduced it down to almost a one-click function that automatically consumes and produces the new product in the system. That change went from taking someone two hours a day to do processing down about five-to-ten minutes.

By using the license plates and the tickets that the operators, the packaging operators are generating, we're able to trace that pallet, which is really helpful when we need to do blends, or we need to cut certain products. We have a huge warehouse and if we want to find a certain product, even a certain pallet, which is usually about fifteen hundred pounds, and it's being housed with millions of pounds, we're able to find that product.

We were looking for a company that was familiar with food processing and non-discreet processing, because when we put a pecan into process, we really don't know what's coming out. Most manufacturing companies are used to discreet, they know what's going in, they know what's going out. We needed someone who was familiar with that type of process.

When we were packing, before, it was really labor-intensive, or it was done by hand. There's a lot of ledgers being done. Right now, it's all automated. As soon as they make a ticket, there is a vacuum-packed bag that, that's consumed, and we know it's been used, and it's helped us quite a bit.

We were talking to a different couple of vendors in the area, that knew NAV, when we told them what we're looking for, they referred us to Beck. Well, I can tell you is one of the things we liked about Beck was bcFood. We felt to get some of the functionality that we wanted, we're gonna have to do a lot of customization, and bcFood had a lot of the base functionality built-in that we didn't have to go out and customize. This is actually our second implementation of NAV. There was a big conversion back in 2008, where we did our first implementation of NAV; and the second time we wanted to get a little more functionality out of it.

We were using some of the basic features at that time. And we wanted to move and get more functionality, get more detail, get more real-time tracking of our processes. So we started looking for a new implementation.

From a nut in the ground, all the way to a cash flow positive, it takes approximately ten years. And as soon as it's harvested, we actually bring it into the plant and freeze it so that the nut is actually taken care of and not left to germinate.

The harvest is done in December, January, depending on the weather. We wait for our first frost so that the pecans can be shaken off the tree. After that it goes to a pasteurization process. Our crackers will crack each individual nut. It goes to our electronic sorting machines. There we use infrared technology. Our infrared detects "black eye", we call "black eye" any defect in the pecan, and it will kick it out.

"What are you doing here?" Picking a pecan to crack. So first, we're going to adjust the pecan cracker. And then you're gonna crack it and then you can peel the sides off. Look it, I got a perfect top out of it. "Oh that looks cool." See I am the best professional. "You're the one who can crack a few hundred an hour." Yes I am. Now it's your turn.

We use bcEDI, we use bcMobile, and and we use bcFood. The consultants at Beck were very knowledgeable about food processing. They worked well with us. There's still some functionality we're slowly adding into our business. You know change takes a while and so we're working slowly to bring a lot of that functionality in. When the consultants came in, and we showed them our process, they did challenge us. They made us look at our processes, they introduced best practices what other food manufacturers are doing and we adapted to some of those changes.

The knowledge that was there was exactly what we needed. What impressed me most is that when we were running into an issue during implementation, one of the owners got involved and helped resolve the problem. Well, the interesting point about what's next is that we really haven't stopped since implementation.

We've been continuously improving as we go throughout this process. Every time we find something that's taken our user a little longer than we'd like, or something has too many steps, we find ways to automate it. And that's one of the things that Beck has helped us with. They've continuously been with us and helped us improve throughout the whole process.

If your food business wants to utilize our industry-specific food and beverage software like Green Valley Pecan, contact our team today.