February 2022SHARE
February 2022
SHARE
Summary

TradeEdge Reinvented Supply Chain Traceability at Mars. With a significant investment strengthening the distribution network and supply chain, TradeEdge implementation helped a global F&B client manage market traceability — Hold and Release Process — for the company’s digital supply chain initiative. Read on to know it was implemented & achieved.

“The benefit of the Traceability Transformation Program to the wide industry is in demonstrating that it’s possible to meet these requirements and provide traceability to our consumers — to understand what is happening upstream in the supply chain and what’s happening outbound — where our products sit at any moment in time, to place products on hold or recall them if necessary and do so in an effective manner. This is achievable for a large company like Mars and sets the standard for others to follow.”
Benjamin Kreider, Sr Director, Supply Chain and R&D, Mars

Mars is a global manufacturer of confectionery, pet food, and food products. Mars, Incorporated, prides itself on being family-owned for over 100 years with bold ambitions to invest in the long-term future of their business. It also provides veterinary health services and operates in more than 80 countries.

TradeEdge Traceability program has helped Mars meet the needs of market traceability for the company’s digital supply chain initiative. TradeEdge absorbs and harmonizes data from multiple ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning) and warehouse management systems agnostic and provides a unified business consumption layer to business users.

This program is being implemented globally across all Mars business segments, leveraging Agile ways of working in a decentralized business landscape. Mars can meet commitments despite restrictions arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Key Challenges addresses through this program

  • The variable data attributes that were required to be collected (based on customers requirement, product type, and industry) made it difficult for an ERP system to meet a specific traceability requirement
  • Slow speed of deployment due to complexity in organization’s processes and challenges associated with varied technology maturity across the supply chain

How does an enterprise achieve a Successful Transformation Program?

  • The entire organization needs to be aligned with the program, from senior leadership to the field staff — focus on delivery and execution
  • Integrating data from disparate data sources requires the organization to be flexible, thus providing a unified user experience for stakeholders
  • With changing consumer shopping behavior due to the pandemic, companies need to implement a direct-to-consumer strategy to retain customers

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The TradeEdge Traceability Solution

It is a cloud-based and globally scalable solution designed to enable enterprises to control the inventory movement in near-real-time (Hold & Release Process). It offers enterprises a scalable ERP-agnostic solution that connects with legacy and modern records systems across the supply chain. TradeEdge implementation helped Mars harmonize data from multiple ERP and warehouse management systems agnostic, providing a unified business consumption layer to business users.

It achieved

  • Faster time-to-resolution
  • Automated mapping, cleansing, standardizing, and structuring of data
  • The single version of the truth with a unified, holistic data repository
  • Standardized Hold and Release Process

Disclaimer Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the respective institutions or funding agencies