Hitachi Vantara Leads Soup-to-Nuts ERP System Transformation at Morgan Foods

Leading food manufacturer partners with Hitachi Vantara to serve up a faster, more efficient ERP system that allows Morgan Foods to move its hottest soups efficiently through its supply chain. 

  • May 24, 2023 | Author: Melanie McMullen
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From baked beans to chicken noodle soup, Morgan Foods prepares and distributes many of the nation’s favorite supermarket-branded canned goods. Founded in 1899 in Austin, Indiana, the company is one of the largest three soup manufacturers in the US and has more than 800 employees.

A secret ingredient to the success of Moran Foods is it technology. With an emphasis on research and development, the company invests heavily in the tools necessary to produce consistently high-quality products, including private-label soups, beans, sauces, and broths, distributed through an optimized supply chain. 

To stay at the top of its game, Morgan Foods realized that it needed accurate forecasting and production and planning tools to help manage peaks in demand. Morgan Foods often found itself struggling to keep up with customer demand, and in some cases had to produce extra inventory to ensure it could meet customer service levels. Company managers needed visibility into transactional activities to make better, more accurate business decisions. 

To reach those goals, Morgan Foods partnered with Hitachi Vantara to upgrade its SAP ECC 6.0 EHP7 landscape to the latest version, based on SAP S/4HANA. Morgan Foods chose to work with Hitachi Vantara based on prior, successful project relationships. Hitachi Vantara had been a partner on more than 12 key initiatives leading up to the upgrade project. 

The Perfect Recipe for Planning and Analytics

The Hitachi-led upgrade project at Morgan Foods focused on:

  • Migrating the company to SAP S/4HANA
  • Deploying a new user experience
  • Implementing IBP Supply to help improve planning and drive manufacturing efficiency. 

Following the eight-month project, the new S/4HANA and IBP solutions were launched virtually with help from Hitachi Vantara’s global team. As part of the launch, the Hitachi team also introduced a set of learning tools to boost user adoption and confidence in using the new functionality. 

Morgan Foods added new tools for production planning and scheduling, enhanced product pricing capabilities, and adopted embedded analytics capabilities using Fiori and Analysis for Office. The company rolled out enhanced functionality across multiple areas of its food manufacturing processes, including accounting, planning, production, sales, warehouse management, shipping, product lifecycle management, quality management and procurement.

In a recent SAP Insider presentation, Steve Hankins, CFO at Morgan Foods, shared how key project execution tools helped in the effort. “By unlocking greater value from our ERP system, we’ve been able to increase visibility,” he says. “The solution will support innovation and help us maximize customer satisfaction as we continue to grow.”

With enhanced ERP functionality, Hankins says Morgan Foods has made improvements to warehouse management operations and supply chain forecasting. As a result, it’s able to meet customer demand, delivering its products on time even during peak seasons, while reducing inventory requirements.

Learn more about Hitachi Vantara ERP Modernization Services for SAP.

Read the Morgan Foods profile.

 

Image Source: Getty Images

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