Undertaking a Digital “Fermentation” Process of Supply Chain
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“GS1 Hong Kong brought us global perspectives and assisted us to modernise our relatively traditional business model. Product traceability and inventory turnover in the supply chain is critical for us to ensure we serve fresh products to our consumers every day. With the support from GS1 Hong Kong, we can focus on our core competency, realise savings from digitalization and speed up our expansion plan.”
Jeff Law, Director
Background
As Sun Fat Heung goes from strength to strength with product diversification and strong marketing efforts, a more complex web of supply chain involving suppliers, wholesalers and retailers arises. The traditional ways of manual operation and paper filing system across the production lines no longer meet the growing volume of businesses. The soy food manufacturer acknowledges the need to transform, in terms of production, logistics as well as the entire company structure.
In particular, enhanced efficiency in its supply chain to record the movement and storage of food and beverages are crucial to meet its business growth. Equally important is the need for a modernised system to facilitate internal communication between the purchasing, warehouse and production team.
GS1 standards used or solution (s) / service (s) applied
Global Trade Item Number (GTIN)
Smart Professional Services
Smart Operations
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Solutions
Sun Fat Heung enlisted the support from GS1 Hong Kong’s Supply Chain Management Professional Service (SCMPS) team to assess the company’s supply chain. The team benchmarked it with global standard practices, and found the paper-based communication procedure being one of the major pain points that caused inefficiency and inaccuracy.
After a thorough review, from raw materials receiving, warehouse management, production, all the way down to order receiving, transportation, invoicing and product return, the SCMPS team designed a more sophisticated supply chain model for Sun Fat Heung to support its transformation needs. That includes the use of global standards like barcode, product / batch scanning at each stage, deployment of ERP system and other technologies.
Digitalisation and process re-engineering had brought about a more efficient supply chain, which helps the company improve its inventory turnover by a staggering 25%, while responding faster to business partners. The savings in administrative cost due to reduced human operation has achieved a remarkable 20%, because of higher accuracy between electronic orders and invoices whereas better traceability of its products is observed.
The company realises the importance of unique identification of products and digitalisation as the foundation of effective operation, traceability, warehouse management and data analysis, and expects to further streamline its processes by accelerating the adoption of technologies and global standards.
Benefits
An end-to-end standardised and digitalised system is key to its success:
Improve Inventory turnover by 25% by knowing the real-time movements of goods
Lower administrative cost by 20% owing to less manual operation
Enhanced visibility and traceability of all products and deliveries, uplifting trading partners’ confidence
About the Company
Founded in 1958, Sun Fat Heung Food Products Ltd has been focusing on the soy industry in Hong Kong for more than 60 years. Running the market brand Top Soya, the company is committed to producing high quality soy products and insists on local daily production to ensure fresh products for consumers every day.
