Tools to ensure quality shelf-life management

Are you aware of tools to ensure quality shelf-life management?

 It is vital for the manufacturers especially those operating food and beverages, pharmaceuticals or nutraceuticals businesses to ensure that the shelf life of their produce is managed properly, and thus no products in their inventory has expired. There are several factors that affect the shelf life of the product. Take for instance, in food manufacturing, the temperature, recipe, storage time, conditions, gas atmosphere, package, handling impact how long the product is suitable for consumption. Hence, it is important to ensure quality shelf management.  

In today’s post we are going to talk about the tools that can help you empower with shelf-life management: 

• An integrated software 

Expiry date management requires accurate and real time data of the repository. Clearly you cannot maintain data in an excel sheet as it would be time-consuming and results in significant wastage of human potential and other vital resources. Thus, you need an integrated software like cloud-based ERP to streamline all the departments and simplify the expiry date management. A cloud-based ERP system will provide you with real-time, accurate data for successful inventory and expiry date management.  

• Check for patterns 

Keeping a tab on the inventory and the consumer’s purchasing habit will help you strategize accordingly to ensure that you are not selling any expired products. An ERP system with integrated business software can help you track and analyze the pattern. Furthermore, an ERP system will help you by providing reports on the waste and inventory level.  

• Prioritize short-dated products 

To minimize the possibility of having to dump product in the garbage, prioritize those products which are nearing their expiry date. Furthermore, you can sell them at discount to interested consumers. You might have to bear some loss, but this is better than having to throw them away at nothing.  

• Adopt barcodes 

Adding barcodes and scanners in your ERP system can be of significant help in managing expiry date. This will provide you with real-time and accurate data. It is important to note that these barcodes should be of GS1 standard. This will help in minimizing the possibility of transcription error, minimize human intervention and make the operation cycle more efficient.   

• Ensure fresh supply 

Make sure that your inventory is stocked with fresh ingredients to create the products. Implement pre-receipt quality check to set a standard for the ingredients that you are receiving from your suppliers.  

• First expired first out 

Implement a first expired first out logic to ensure that your inventory is stocked with fresh supply. Instead of selecting the products based on when they were received from the warehouse, sell products on the ground of expiry date. This will thus minimize the possibility of wastage and your chances of suffering a loss. But it is important to note that this can be a challenging task with your workforce having to maintain data in the excel sheet. Hence, it will beneficial for your business to implement a cloud-based ERP software as mentioned above.  

Ensuring shelf-life management means less wastage, enhanced cash flow, more profit and a happy customer base. Tayana Solution’s ERP implementation can help you bolster the shelf-life management with automation, ensuring efficient production that maintain inventory balance.

Reach out to Tayana’s ERP experts, today!