Digitalization enables Vion Food Group to control the entire chain from farm to fork. Vion is an international producer of meat, meat products and vegetable alternatives and has thirty production sites in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Vion invests in renewal of the network and the total application landscape. Simac plays an important role in this. Peter Hielkema and Raoul Lustermans of Vion: "Transparency in the chain is only possible through far-reaching digitalization."
Transparency is a big thing within Vion. Nowadays, there are more and more opportunities to inform consumers about origin and related matters through information on product packaging.
"Of course, tracking and tracing is required by law. At the push of a button, we have to be able to show local authorities what we have delivered to which customers. But toward consumers we go one step further."
Providing transparency is part of the Building Balanced Chains strategy. Vion wants to make the supply chain as short as possible so that meat and vegetable products end up in stores and restaurants in the best possible way. To this end, the food producer connects a group of livestock farmers or farmers with a group of customers to create a customer-specific chain.
Blockchain
Such a degree of transparency in the chain is only possible through far-reaching digitalization. One of the tools that Vion deploys for this purpose is the blockchain. "In this we work together with our chain partners, where we take control. Thanks to the blockchain, we can be completely transparent about the products we supply," says Hielkema. He gets support from Raoul Lustermans, Manager of Global Infrastructure Services at Vion. "The blockchain requires a different, more open way of cooperation in the chain where transparency is paramount."
Implementation of SAP
Part of digitization is the rationalization of the application landscape. Through acquisitions, Vion has grown into an internationally operating company with thirty production sites and various ERP systems. Within the Netherlands, the company currently works with various software programs on the iSeries platform that communicate with each other via interfaces. The branches in Germany work with an Oracle application that was developed within Vion itself and is due for renewal. These Dutch and German applications are being replaced by the sales and purchasing modules of SAP S/4HANA.
"We have already centralized and standardized the financial administration on SAP software. The same applies to almost the entire personnel administration. Parts of our organization are therefore already used to working with SAP. With this we are taking the next step in rationalizing our application landscape," Hielkema explains the choice of SAP. Vion wants to outsource the management of SAP S/4HANA, just as it has previously done with the systems for financial administration and personnel administration.
"Because of the good experience, Simac was selected as a partner to provide functional application management of SAP S/4HANA in addition to technical application management. We are currently in the process of finalizing the contract."
Investing in network
In addition, Simac has been commissioned to manage and optimize connectivity within Vion. Until now, Vion did that itself. "But it is difficult to find good IT people for that. Eighty percent of the people deployed for that purpose were already self-employed, with the added disadvantage that few improvements could be made. Because we see that everything around infrastructure has increasingly become a commodity, we decided to outsource," Lustermans says.
Cisco as a partner
Among other things, Simac is going to eliminate overdue maintenance in infrastructure. This means that Simac, together with Cisco, will replace the wifi network, network components and telephony at all locations in the near future. This will improve the transparency, stability and thus continuity of the network, Lustermans expects. "Moreover, we will soon know exactly what we have running everywhere. Now we sometimes discover a device we didn't know was connected to the network. If we have more visibility into the use of the network, we can also secure it better."
First run
The list of potential IT service providers included as many as ten names. That the choice fell on Simac was largely due to the competencies available. "We spoke with several of Simac's clients. From them we heard good stories. Perhaps Simac could improve a bit in project management, but in network management they are rock solid. The latter was decisive for us. And of course, besides quality, price also plays a role," says Lustermans. What also appeals to Hielkema is the click with Simac. The cultures of both companies match perfectly: "We often meet for coffee. That's important, because we like to look our partners in the eye."
"Characteristically, when a problem occurs, the people at Simac immediately start running to solve it. Only afterwards do they check whether that is actually part of their remit. There are parties that do the opposite, with the result that the operation can then grind to a halt."
"In the realm of IT, speed is becoming more and more important. The more we standardize in this area, the faster we can move.''
Faster shifting
The implementation of SAP S/4HANA and network modernization will enable Vion to further improve transparency. Hielkema points to the new Vion Business Analytics Competence Center. Within this team, information needs are defined together with people from the business. Then the data is unlocked from the source systems and analyzed. All data is stored in Azure, Microsoft's public cloud. This allows Vion to generate a wealth of information in the form of dashboards, reports and trend analysis using Azure tools.
"Right now we are unlocking data from multiple production and ERP systems. Not only towards the new competence center, but also towards our blockchains. The more we standardize in these application layers, the easier we can unlock data and the faster we can switch."
