Premier Foods to implement a Zetes Track & Trace solution integrated with SAP
8/9/09

Zetes, the international leader in the solutions and services industry for automatic identification of goods and people, has won a significant contract with Premier Foods, United Kingdom’s largest food producer. Under the terms of this contract, Zetes will provide a traceability solution to improve the manufacturing and distribution processes of the company’s Hovis Division, which produces 2 million loaves of bread every day.

If fully implemented after a successful pilot phase, Zetes’ solution will enhance Premier’s SAP warehouse management solution with the integration of over 500 barcode scanning devices to track and trace the movement of goods across Hovis’ manufacturing and distribution centres. Zetes completed the integration of mobile devices with Premier’s SAP system using its SAP toolkit, MiNetConnect. As a rapid application development solution, MiNetConnect provides a direct link between SAP and mobile or fixed scanning devices to capture, validate, and process transactions faster, in real-time and with increased accuracy and system reliability.

For the Premier Foods project, Zetes has also developed an additional component that enables the SAP system to receive data from fixed scanners. Zetes’ capability to complete a direct integration with SAP was a key requirement for Premier, because this ensured both that a technically complex project could be simplified as much as possible and minimized the numbers of suppliers involved. Currently, scanners have been installed in three facilities to ensure that automated processes can be implemented to enable business controls, product visibility and traceability across the supply chain, at the same time as maintaining responsiveness to time-critical events. Subject to the success of the initial pilot phase, Hovis will consider a full roll out of the traceability solution to all 23 of its UK sites during 2010.

“We are pleased to be working with Zetes and look forward to continuing our relationship with the roll out of what will be a transformational project,” says Phil McCallum, IT and Infrastructure Director at Premier Foods. “The traceability solution we are piloting with Zetes will, we hope, solve long standing issues our company has faced within the Hovis bakery supply chain.”

James Hannay, VP of Northern Europe for Zetes commented, “Improved traceability is important for Premier on many levels, enabling better management of product supply into the marketplace and more accurate stock replenishment. This translates into a better service to retailers and greater consumer satisfaction.” This project will contribute to the objectives announced for 2009 for the Zetes Group.

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