Established 140 years ago, AG Barr is an independent soft drink manufacturer based in Cumbernauld, Scotland, producing 1,500,000 liters of product per day. Their diverse beverage portfolio spans 48 markets and includes established brands such as Irn-Bru, Rubicon and Strathmore Water. AG Barr has experienced a period of sustained growth and plans to capitalize and maintain this by continuing to invest in all aspects of their manufacturing infrastructure. They have plans to upgrade existing warehouse sites and construct a new automated warehouse in 2022.
AG Barr needed a new inventory management solution for their raw materials warehouse, which houses everything from raw ingredients to the syrups used in the production of the final product. A crucial component of the manufacturing process, the raw materials warehouse contains thousands of pounds worth of stock, that is use by date sensitive.
The existing manual paper-based processes used to record inventory created a 48-hour lag as counts were keyed into the back office. Even then, the only view of inventory AG Barr had was a snapshot in time leading to a genuine risk that products weren’t being used in sequence and waste may be occurring.
Evaluating a range of solutions AG Barr had five key requirements that the new solution would have to provide:
- John Thompson, Supply Chain Business Process Lead, AG Barr
AG Barr selected Cloud Inventory® by Nextworld. The solution was comprised of the Cloud Inventory Platform with standardized integrations and ERP Accelerators for JDE and the Enterprise Printing Platform™ (EPP), ensuring the business could solve its existing challenges and future proof for scalable growth. Our products are designed to seamlessly integrate with Oracle JD Edwards, making implementation times favorable and allowing AG Barr to swiftly see a return on their investment.
“During the selection process it was crucial that the solution selected would be able to work harmoniously with our other warehouse systems,” said John Thompson, Business Process Lead – Supply Chain, AG Barr. “Their experience and unparalleled knowledge of the food and beverage sector were major factors in our decision process.”
Cloud Inventory was delivered to a fixed deadline, rolling out multiple applications and the EPP printing software in a single phase. This meant that AG Barr was able to continue with their day-to-day operations with no impact, which was crucial to the team at large.
AG Barr’s digital transformation of its inventory processes has already generated a positive return on investment. By removing the 48-hour inventory snapshot and having a full real-time view of their inventory, AG Barr has been able to make additional configurations to their backend JD Edwards system and processes. They now have standard places for inventory, reduced picking times and a warning process if any inventory item is running low.
AG Barr plans to extend their use of Cloud Inventory in additional sites, continuing to optimize the movement of inventory, before focusing on the construction of a fully automated warehouse.
