An established user of Movex, Allied Domecq is now also reaping the benefits of Lawson’s advanced planning and scheduling solution. By implementing Lawson’ s Multi-Site Planner (MSP), integrated with the Movex enterprise management system, Allied Domecq is now able to schedule its plant production requirements more effectively, ensuring product is available on time to meet customer requirements.

“Production planning can now be done in minutes,” says Phil Taylor, production planner at Allied Domecq.

“With the system in place we also know that our planning data supports and is tightly integrated with all other processes across the business - such as dry goods purchasing and wine scheduling.”

One of the company’s core objectives is to provide the best possible customer service at the lowest cost. Continually improving processes is crucial to achieving this goal.

“We have around 300-400 products that we have to plan at any given time,” said Taylor. “It’s an immense and highly complex job. A planner has to take account of factors such as forecast demand, current export orders, safety stock requirements, sequencing of products by wine type and bottle type to minimize changeover costs and wine losses, capacity of each line and economic batch sizing. This planning task is performed several times a week and until recently, has been a lengthy, manual process.”

The advanced planning system now enables planners to very quickly establish an optimised production schedule based on all of the above factors. Several options can therefore be evaluated and compared before making a final decision.

“Previously the processes would be heavily reliant on the knowledge of planners, who were using spreadsheets for tasks such as capacity planning, scheduling requirements and recording data. Use of spreadsheets meant that at times staff would be working with out of date information”.  “MSP has changed that,” he says.

The company
Allied Domecq Wines is New Zealand's leading wine-maker, with vineyards in all of the major wine regions of the country. As the organisation sources most of its grapes for premium wines from its own vineyards, the company is able to extend complete control over the quality of its product. This also leads to stability of supply, as well as the flexibility to experiment and innovate.

Its broad product range includes sparkling and fortified wines together with still wines in traditional styles such as Bordeaux and Sauternes, as well as distinctly New World Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and the world-renowned Sauvignon Blanc.

In November 2000, the company - then Montana Wines - purchased New Zealand's second largest wine company, Corbans Wines, extending both its grape resource and brand portfolio, enabling it to achieve greater economies of scale and to exploit opportunities in international markets. In August 2001 Montana became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the global drinks company, Allied Domecq.

Today, the local arm of Allied Domecq, with an annual turnover of around $330 million, represents Montana, Corbans, Church Road and Stoneleigh and changed its name to Allied Domecq Wines New Zealand in September 2004 to better reflect the range of products.

The company operates wineries in Marlborough, Gisborne and Hawke's Bay. The corporate head office is in Auckland, with a large bottling facility, winery and extensive warehousing complex. A distribution center dispatches the finished product all over New Zealand and around the   world.

Allied Domecq Wines New Zealand sells some 60 million litres of wine annually. Exports amount to about 11 million litres of wine to the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia.

Why Movex
Allied Domecq has long been a successful user of Lawson’s Movex solution. In 1998 the company sought to integrate its systems to help manage and develop its expanding operations. With a legacy of fragmented systems that could not support the rapidly growing business, it sought out an integrated enterprise management application that could meet the demands of its growth strategy – Movex ERP.

By 2003, Allied Domecq decided the time was right to upgrade to Lawson’s Movex version 12, which opened a window of opportunity to integrate Movex more fully, and later enabled the seamless integration of MSP.

It was an important step in moving towards greater supply chain integration, enabling process improvements from production planning through to distribution.

“Movex enables us to work from one set of up-to-the-minute data,” says Taylor. “Once planning is finalised, the rest of the ERP system is automatically updated across areas such as dry goods purchasing and wine scheduling, hence maximising operational efficiencies,”

The system now also enables better evaluation of longer term scheduling options, for supporting staff, capacity and inventory planning.

Implementation
The strengths of Lawson's implementation methodology were illustrated when Movex was first installed throughout the company's New Zealand and Australian operations.

The implementation and commissioning of MSP in 2004 proved to be equally smooth and seamless. The whole process was completed within four months and ensured that the planning team were quickly up and running and benefiting from the system.

Future plans
As the success of Movex has been demonstrated across other areas of the business, Allied Domecq is now also embarking on a project to enhance maintenance management. Plant maintenance is an area vital to operational reliability, which can impact the bottom line of a business.

Allied Domecq will continue to focus on its ongoing improvement program, ensuring that new system capabilities are leveraged to full advantage for maximum business efficiencies.

February 2005