Premier Foods uses its loaf in tracking trial

Premier Foodscontinues to improve its enterprise wide SAP platform with the announcement today that it will integrate a tracking system in its Hovis bread division. As the company behind a wide range of well known food brands, including Branston, Mr Kipling, Oxo, Homepride and Smash, Premier Foods is standardising and centralising its IT and back office functions around the SAP enterprise resource planning system.

Premier Foodsis adopting a tracing system from Zetes which will automatically indentify goods and people by using mobile devices and barcodes connected directly to the SAP platform. Five hundred bar code reading devices will track goods through the entire bread production process and into distribution.

Premier Foods is initially trialling the system in its Hovis division, which produced two million loaves of bread a day.

Zetes is integrating the mobile devices into the SAP platform using the MiNetConnect SAP toolkit to ensure a direct link between SAP and the devices to capture, validate and process transactions. If the trial is successful Premier Foods will consider full roll out across its 23 Hovis sites in 2010.

Premier Foods is currently undergoing an £80 million change programme as a result of merger and acquisition activity that has seen Premier Foods grow to become a £2.6 billion company. At the centre is the SAP system and a new centre of excellence for SAP and back office functions being set up in Manchester.

Zetesspecialises in tracking systems using bar codes, voice recognition, RFID and smart card technology in manufacturing, distribution, healthcare and the public sector.