McCain achieves global production synchronisation
frozen foods, has installed FullTilt's I-Accel collaborative
product information management (CPIM) software in order to achieve
data synchonisation and standardised product information across six
continents.
This reflects an industry-wide move towards complete supply chain integration, a concept that is being achieved through the adoption of new technologies such as CPIM.
McCain, Canada's largest international food company, recently conducted an exhaustive evaluation of CPIM software in an effort to best synchronize its product information across more than 55 production facilities on six continents and more than 20,000 employees worldwide.
In addition, McCain felt that it needed to effectively be able to electronically synchronize that data externally with their global trading partners and industry registries.
"I-Accel will help McCain effectively coordinate product information flows throughout our enterprise, with our trading partners, and with providers like UCCnet and ECCnet," said Don Luby, director of IT planning and e-business at McCain Foods. "FullTilt has developed what we found to be the best collaborative product information management solution on the market for McCain's needs.
"We see I-Accel and the people at FullTilt as a competitivedifferentiator and a foundational requirement for our future B2Binitiatives."
The retail industry is currently faced with the enormous challenge ofsharing product information through global trading networks as well asbetween their own internal systems. Within the enterprise, retailers must produce and update content in a timely fashion, leverage existing media assets, translate copy to various languages, and assure the quality of customer-facing information, quickly and cost-effectively.
Companies must also deliver accurate and current product information to multiple Internet commerce websites, exchanges, data pools/registries, trading partners and internal systems in many different exacting formats and in a variety of protocols.
In this context, FullTilt feels that its I-Accel software is auniquely valuable tool. It is a comprehensive, web-based CPIM software product with a shared enterprise-wide repository; its flexibility enables it to be used by manufacturers, distributors, retailers, exchanges and data pools across multiple industries to synchronize data within and beyond the enterprise.
"McCain's intention to use I-Accel to manage product information worldwide was driven in part by the industry-wide call for data synchronization around UCCnet and its Canadian counterpart ECCnet,"
said Luby. "It also is a directresponse to our need to deliver standardised quality information to ourcustomers, and to improve our overall business process efficiencies."
Canada-based McCain Foods is the world's largest processor of French fried potatoes. The company has more than 20,000 employees, more than 55 production facilities on six continents and annual revenues of $4.1 billion (C$6.1 billion).
McCain Foods also produces many other food products, including potato specialities, appetizers, green vegetables, desserts, pizzas, juices, oven meals and entrees.
