Industries
In 1824, William and Henry Marriage started to mill the wheat their family farm was producing. These brothers founded a rapidly growing company, by using wind and waterpower to mill bread flour. In 1899, the company moved its main office to Chelmer Mills in Chelmsford (English county of Essex), where it is still located today. The animal feed manufacturing operations were established in the early 1970s.
Thanks to its meticulous selection of raw materials, the loyal relationship with its suppliers, and qualitative business processes W. & H. Marriage & Sons has become a reference in the animal feed and flour industry. George Marriage, the current vice-chairman of the National Association of British & Irish Millers (Nabim), his brother Peter, and his cousin Simon represent the fifth generation. A few years ago, George’s daughter Hannah was the first woman to join the family business. Today, together with her cousins James and Sam, as fellow Directors, she’s writing a new chapter in the history of the business.
What preceded
About ten years ago, the family considered that the time was right to renew the IT systems of W & H Marriage & Sons. In the first place, it implemented a new PLC system, among other things. In the next stage, an ERP solution was implemented.
The starting point
The combination of animal feed and flour is not common. Although both activities show some parallels, they also appear to be very different. George Marriage explains: “The nuances might be subtle, but they are important. The quality of the wheat is a crucial parameter during the flour production. For animal feed, we focus even more on the nutritional value. The production process also looks different. Wheat is being processed into flour using a continuous bulk process, while we are proceeding per batch for the animal feed. Consequently, we were looking for an ERP application that would support both business entities.”
The solution
Today, MILAS®, BESTMIX Software's industry-specific extension for Microsoft Dynamics AX, structures the workflow at W & H Marriage & Sons. A crucial success factor is the integration with the existing software for quality control, transport planning, and factory planning.
As far as George Marriage is concerned, BESTMIX Software’s know-how and experience in the food and feed industry were the deciding factors in his search for the perfect ERP partner. “In animal feed production, right in BESTMIX Software's field of expertise, the greatest complexity lies in the use of many formulations. Since this company meets the specificity of the flour mill, I consider our relationship with BESTMIX Software as a partnership. This collaboration is enriching because BESTMIX Software further adapts its ERP software to our needs while expanding its expertise within the flour mill industry.”
The implementation
The implementation was preceded by an extensive study. “I consider it important to determine exactly what software should be able to do and what not. Since a new ERP implementation has a big impact on the functioning of your organization, you shouldn’t take unnecessary risks,” says George Marriage. BESTMIX Software considers that this philosophy is of paramount importance for every project. Using the MoSCoW method, both parties have categorized the various priorities. The method stands for the wishes and requirements a company distinguishes Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, and Would-have. “Essentially, we limited ourselves to the must-haves,” explains George Marriage, “although some should-haves were also evolving in that direction during the reflection process. We have excluded from our plans some functionalities we are barely using, given our size and activities.”
George Marriage emphasized the importance of an accurate specification of requirements and that all parties to a project need to listen carefully to avoid misunderstandings.
Data cleansing was a second important step in the implementation process. Once again, BESTMIX Software determined the boundaries for this exercise, in close collaboration with the team from W & H Marriage & Sons. “The go-live had to be immediately right because the deliveries to our bakers and livestock farmers could not be compromised.” These preparatory stages mainly took place during the go-live weekend. “Although we are producing excellent volumes, our team only consists of circa 100 employees. Consequently, we couldn’t just send people on training all the time. Therefore, the support by and interaction with BESTMIX Software turned out to be crucial.”
The user experience
Thanks to the extended preparatory stage, W & H Marriage & Sons was able to ensure the delivery of its flour and animal feed ranges during the go-live. During the past two years, BESTMIX Software has been assisting its customers with further optimizations. George Marriage considers it as a continuous process.
Meanwhile, daughter Hannah Marriage said that we wanted a single viewpoint, to avoid having different versions of the truth in different parts of the company.
“MILAS AX helps us to more easily document the traceability of our products”, George Marriage adds. “Perhaps, the biggest challenge might be to ensure that all users optimally benefit from the new ERP solution. This isn’t always obvious for employees with a limited IT background, but we are also making progress in this field, together with BESTMIX Software.”