Uesugi Farms, Inc.
History
Uesugi Farms, Inc. is a major grower/packer/shipper of bell peppers, chili peppers, Napa cabbage, bok choy, strawberries and pumpkins. Uesugi farms ranges just under 5,000 acres. Joe Aiello, and his former partner, Dennis Humphreys, bought the firm, which was originally founded in the 1950s by George Uesugi, a farmer in Morgan Hill, CA, in April 1979 and have built it into the well-known business it is today.
Challenges
As the company continued to grow, the manual procedures for managing grower operations became a bottleneck and prevented them from being able to efficiently perform company operations like tracking inventory from Field to Fork, tracking, forecasting and moving inventory in real time, and maintaining a simple point of entry within the companywide ERP system.
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Crescent Solutions
President, Joe Aiello, turned to Crescent in January 2013 to help resolve these issues. Crescent first helped customize Ueusgi’s Sage software to integrate the Grower/Packer specific features. Uesugi found the Grower Accounting feature especially helpful, in managing each grower contract and tracking joint venture cost and revenue.
Uesugi saw an immediate impact from day one. Simple procedures like grower/buyer invoicing no longer were a bottleneck for the company. Uesugi was also able to utilize the Inventory features which allowed transfer of materials and production transactions to be verified and posted to the ERP system all in real time eliminating lag time and hold up between certain processes.
Crescent Software is based on Sage 100 ERP; industry-leading accounting and ERP software Crescent software provides comprehensive solutions for Growers, Packers/Shippers, Manufacturers, Processors and Distributors. Through many years of experience our team has developed a select group of solutions tailored to fit each industry’s specific needs. Crescent designs, develops and implements premier software systems specialized for the Food Industry, with an emphasis on Grower Accounting, Lot Tracking, ‘Field-to-Fork’ traceability, Production Maintenance, Warehouse Automation and Product Costing. Crescent provides software and expertise that can streamline operations from receiving to production to storage to shipping.
CHALLENGES
Uesugi needed the ability to do all of the following:
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Field-to-Fork traceability from receiving through packing to shipping
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Anticipated sellable inventory updated in real-time
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Production information collected on a real-time basis
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Grower accounting with buyer invoicing and grower invoicing tightly integrated
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Real-time inventory movement and traceability
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Fast-paced, high-volume billing and payables
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Single point of entry integration with the company’s ERP system
SOLUTIONS
Below are just some of the solutions Crescent provided them:
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Receiving by field ID and transportation Tag with a system-generated lot code
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Lot details are captured during the receiving process per user-defined criteria
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Capture receipts as they occur, production data directly from the shop floor, and shipments as they are loaded. Field estimates are entered daily
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Packed product lot codes are system-generated consistently across production lines
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Inventory can be transferred from location to location in real-time using barcode and scanning technology
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Invoices are created automatically from the Shipping process eliminating errors and delays
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Inventory and production transactions are verified within the ERP system and posted to the ERP system in real-time