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NEW PRODUCT FOCUS
Don’t neglect the
optimization By Ian Mealey, Product Line Director – Formulation, Format Solutions Ltd., Cargill.
Aquafeed manufacturers around the world form a significant role in the food chain, bringing quality feeds to the aquaculture industry as it plays its part in feeding an ever increasing population. The pressure on manufacturers to strive for efficiency in all aspects of production is constant. Feed producers are looking to software systems to assist in these efforts as they cope with various pressures. These include the need to control costs, managing ingredient variability, industry consolidation, sourcing of talent and increasing regulatory pressures. Various systems used by feed producers, such as
feed formulation and management systems, are being augmented by links with on-farm systems to further enhance capabilities through data analysis and modelling. Feed formulation software is one of the longest established systems used in this food chain. A lot of effort and expenditure is spent in high cost software implementations, such as ERP systems, which certainly bring value to feed producers. After all, they assist in streamlining transactions and processes, and managing costs of operations. Feed formulation software, on the other hand, often involves smaller scale implementations, but still has the potential to bring significant value to the user, for example, in driving cost-savings. In discussing feed formulation, significance is rightly given to the ability of these systems to integrate with others;
automating the collection of inputs and the distribution of outputs ensures accuracy and efficiency in these transactions. However, one detects less emphasis on the optimization capabilities of the system. This may be driven by –
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Market pressures such as increased customization of feeds reducing the role of optimization
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Increased time pressure which reduces the focus on optimization exercises
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An emphasis by formulation suppliers on the integration story, seeing the “big” ERP system as the main driver in the business
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Difficulty in managing and expressing the variability in the data
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Limitations of systems to adequately tackle the questions that are important to users