Why not ERP?

Beer and winemaking is part science, part art. Traditional software systems for planning, scheduling or executing-like Enterprise Resource Planning-primarily target corporate users outside the brewery, winery and vineyard industries.

Consequently, brewers and vintners are not typically well served by traditional systems, and can expend valuable time working with spreadsheets, paper documents, and data entries to separate systems. Timeliness and accuracy are always challenging.

Detail orientated

Yes, ERP systems can include the brew house and cellar tanks as "inventory locations," along with transactions, quantities and cost, but lack meaningful visibility and relevance to brewers, vintners and operations staff beyond these values.

Why? Because you need greater detail than ERP delivers. Data on beer or wine tank contents and characteristics like alcohol by volume (ABV), pH and fermenter curves, for example. Wine and beer production use a batch process, while ERP systems focus predominantly on discreet parts; as a result, ERP has difficulty handling bulk wine and beer production requirements like:

• Trial blending to meet flavour profiles
  and cost requirements
• Standard costing and labelling requirements
• Integrating production process and quality testing data
• Tracking liquid movements, losses and alcohol levels
• Product recall and ingredient traceability