Systematic seasoning

For traceability, costing and also in the production of traditional sausage products – for example when seasoning – Torney Landfleischerei Pripsleben uses the ERP system winweb-food. And for the company’s 25 branches, the powerful software serves as an ordering, information and analysis system.

The small cold room smells like an oriental bazaar: pepper, marjoram, cardamom and cloves fill the air. Only the master butcher is no longer fully conscious of the aromatic blend in all its variety, as he mixes the spices for the company’s own sausage products here every day. „Our sausages are not made with ready-made seasoning blends, but all the ingredients are prepared according to old, traditional recipes and combined, weighed out and added to the sausage meat“, says Frank Wegner, managing partner of Torney Landfleischerei Pripsleben. And not only are the Pomeranian sausages seasoned by hand and cooked on site, but the butcher shop’s salads are also made by hand and seasoned individually.

It is easy to imagine that a company producing 72 different products can no longer operate without IT support. “We introduced winweb-food in 2007, which is also used to weigh and check the seasoning blends for each product,” says Managing Director Frank Wegner. If the weight of the seasoning blend does not match the product to be seasoned, the system issues an error message, explains the 51-year-old.

All processes are supported

Of course, the software supports more than just seasoning: In the carcass cutting operation around 100 pig- and three to four beef carcass halves undergo coarse and fine cutting three times a week, are portioned, labeled via the ERP-system and documented here. winweb-food also provides pre- and post-costing for cut products in order to determine the contribution margin for each item. At the same time, the complete actual cutting output can be recorded in order to present the cutting results with a target-actual comparison of the yield. This allows the gross profit to be calculated at any time.
During the subsequent order picking process, the orders from the individual branches and key accounts are displayed on the touchscreen: processing row with item, quantity ordered and quantity processed, as well as batch number. The order is processed item by item until the required quantity for the respective customer has been reached. If the scale ultimately measures a value other than the weight calculated by the ERP-system, the system reports an error. This is intended to ensure that exactly the quantity ordered is delivered to the 25 branches from Rostock in the northwest to Pasewalk near the Polish border, with 15 stores located in the pre-checkout areas of Netto, Lidl and Kaufland. The three discount retailers in the region are also supplied directly with sausage products and salads.

Branches under control

Particularly important to Frank Wegner is the branch analysis, which is carried out in two ways at Torney: On the one hand, each branch orders whatever is out of stock and needs to be replenished. On the other hand, employees at the head office in Altentreptow can also check the inventory of each branch at any time and track sales. For example, if a type of sausage is approaching its best-before date, the product can be transferred from one branch to another or specifically promoted as a special offer.
The sales of the individual branches are reviewed daily by Wegner, who compares data such as the number of items and sales per customer with the same day in the previous year. Promotions can also be monitored using the branch analysis. The system also measures sales per salesperson and uses them to calculate the employee's bonus

“Never before has an IT migration gone as smoothly as it did with Winweb.”
Frank Wegner, Managing Director of Torney Landfleischerei Pripsleben

Costing at the touch of a button

In addition, Frank Wegner uses the management information system in winweb-food: In the purchasing management system, for example, average purchase prices are compared with carcass cutting prices, while the sales management system can display average prices compared with the previous year, and the warehouse management system provides a precise overview of which products are in stock, in what quantities, and when more must be purchased. “I also use sales channel costing particularly often,” says Wegner. Here, the system calculates the transport costs for all customers other than the company’s own branches and compares them with the applicable terms: “This allows me to view the revenue and profit for each customer quickly and easily,” explains Wegner, who, despite being very satisfied overall, still occasionally has suggestions for improvements to Winweb: “I wanted to be able to track exactly how products such as bockwurst sausages performed across all sales channels.” How many sausages were sold where, what was the revenue, and how much profit did his branches make compared with discounters such as Netto?

Brief profile: Torney Landfleischerei

Torney Landfleischerei Pripsleben GmbH is part of the Torney group of companies, as are Torney Milch und Fleisch e.G. and Torney Mutterkuh GmbH, which together employ around 150 people. Their shared aim is to put the motto “from the barn to the frying pan” into practice and cover the entire process, from producing animal feed and raising cattle and pigs to processing raw materials in production and selling meat and sausage products.
The first butcher’s shop opened in Pripsleben in the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte district in 1990, selling meat and sausage products made in-house. Further branches were gradually opened, mainly in the entrance areas of major discount supermarkets such as Netto and Kaufland.
Torney Landfleischerei Pripsleben GmbH was founded in 1993 and now has 25 branches in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It produces sausage products and, since 2010, salads such as egg, beef, and poultry salads. The branches offer a weekly changing selection of snacks and daily specials.

www.torney-landfleischerei.de
www.winweb.de