Unga Holdings (Unga) is based in Kenya, and consists of a group of milling and process manufacturing companies based in Nairobi, Kenya. The group also runs satellite manufacturing sites elsewhere in Kenya, as well as a milling plant in Kampala, Uganda.  

Unga produces bulk flour and wheat products for city bakeries, as well as smaller packaged products for retail distributors. The company procures wheat, maize and other raw materials from various local and international suppliers, and processes them into finished products at its manufacturing sites. In addition to human nutrition, Unga also produces animal feeds and animal health products.

All Unga manufacturing sites run Infor ERP software.

Setting the Strategy

The weighing of raw materials and finished products is an important part of Unga's large scale milling and processing business. All raw materials need to be weighed as they are received and all finished goods need to be weighed before being dispatched. This weight information then forms the basis of the receipt into the company's Infor ERP system.

This weighing process was previously conducted manually resulting in occasional problems of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the weighbridge weighing data. It also caused many process inefficiencies in terms of the time and resources required to complete all stages of the process.

"We needed a solution that would ensure timeous and accurate capturing of weighbridge information into the ERP system, providing seamless integration between the weighbridge information, and the Infor ERP system, without human intervention," explains James Nyutu, Unga Group financial controller.

Getting Business Specific

Historically, Unga had a reliance on manual processes, as well as the use of external systems such as Excel and data capture books, to record transactions and data offline. Unga has embarked on a drive over the last four years to integrate and automate their business processes into the ERP systems processes, and to drive use of standard, best practice system functionality. Reducing the reliance on external systems and manual paperwork, and introducing a weighbridge interface to its ERP system follows this philosophy.

The solution chosen by Unga Holdings needed to provide the ability to see ready-to-be processed Infor ERP transactions in the weighbridge front-end, and the ability to transfer the resultant weights from the weighbridge system seamlessly into the Infor ERP system. The Infor ERP system needed to then process the weighbridge records to completion, without any manual intervention, to ensure data efficiency and accuracy.

"Unga was impressed with the Infor Warehouse Mobility solution, especially the quick turnaround of the solution development, as well as the robustness and stability of the Infor Warehouse Mobility software," says Nyutu. "The front end of the software is very user friendly as well as easy to understand and deploy, which we were also impressed with, as it makes the solution very easy to use and integrate into our other IT processes," explains Nyutu.

Seeing Results

The implementation of the project was a three way partnership between Softworx, as the Infor partner in sub-Saharan Africa and member of the EOH Group, local Kenyan supplier Scales and Software, together with Unga. Softworx was appointed the primary contractor, under project manager Allan West, who was responsible for the overall project management and delivery of the Infor solution. Scales and Software of Kenya was contracted to manage the weighbridge development, and Unga key users managed the defining of system requirements, training and rollout to their end users.

"Initial design workshops, between Softworx, Scales and Software and Unga were held in Nairobi, where the detailed business processes and transactional data flows were mapped out and agreed upon," explains Allan West, Softworx project manager. "Development of the Warehouse Mobility software and the development of the weighbridge front end were performed off-site, and deployed onto Infor ERP and the weighbridge development environments," says West.

The build and test phase were performed primarily on site, by Softworx, Scales and Software and Unga.The rollout of the software was done in a phased approach, starting with Nairobi, and after stabilisation, the remote sites were taken live.

The Infor Warehouse Mobility solution enables ERP master data, including customer, supplier and warehouse data, to be read into the weighbridge system on a real-time basis. Transactional data is also read into the system on a real time basis, including open purchase orders, open sales orders, and open replenishment orders," explains West.

The weighbridge system performs a first and second weight (the empty truck weight, and then the loaded truck weight), and the difference, linked to an Infor ERP purchase or sales order number, is passed to a staging table. The Infor Warehouse Mobility module then takes over, processing these incoming records automatically through the Infor ERP system. The actual weight is checked against the theoretical, and if outside a pre-defined tolerance, the weighing is blocked. After verification and release by a supervisor, the record is sent to the ERP system. Here, Infor Warehouse Mobility completes the delivery process and prints the sales invoice.

The solution also caters for processes where the Purchase or Sales orders do not originate in the Infor ERP system. Unga has a network of local farmers who supply grain directly to the plants, at a pre-determined, and publically published purchase price. On the sales side, they offer a public weighing service, where third parties can bring their trucks and be weighed. In both these cases, records are created in the Infor ERP staging tables without existing purchase and sales order numbers. Infor Warehouse Mobility performs the entire transaction, from the creation of the order to completion.

Business Benefits

The most important benefit of the Infor Warehouse Mobility Solution is the real-time visibility of open orders in the weighbridge front end, against which weighbridge users can record weights, with no further manual interaction required. "This has vastly improved the efficiency and accuracy of our weighbridge data and allowed seamless integration into our Infor ERP system," explains Nyutu.

Another important benefit of the solution is the ability to trigger a gate purchase or a sale, from the weighbridge front end – completely eliminating the need to have an additional resource to perform the ERP tasks. "This customisation of the system has made our transactions with local farmers, which we want to encourage, that much easier and more efficient," says Nyutu.

Each department within the company is experiencing benefits due to the implementation of the Infor Warehouse Mobility solution. The purchasing department can now concentrate on their core business processes of procuring grains at the best prices, while the day to day gate purchases are taken care of by the software interface. Likewise, the sales department can concentrate on their customers and the sale of finished goods, while the non-core processes of selling a public weighing (or the sale of scrap) is handled seamlessly by the interface.

The goods receiving process is also streamlined. In the past, it involved the weighbridge operator, then manual intervention to write down weights, and the goods receiving clerk to capture the receipt into the ERP system. This process is now handled by the interface, and triggered by the weighbridge operator.

Doing business better

"Overall, Unga has experienced immediate benefits in terms of enhanced financial controls, complete visibility, and time savings resulting from the implementation of the Infor Warehouse Mobility solution," concludes Nyutu.

The project has highlighted the financial and business process advantages of implementing automation and integration, by means of a standard software solution, which will keep pace with the Infor ERP solution in place.

The Infor Warehouse Mobility solution also caters for standard shop floor barcode-driven automation. Unga management are in the process of considering the deployment of this additional feature in the future.