The company
Peercore is an established manufacturer of premium quality edible oils, fats and margarines. 100% Australian Owned, Peercore supply a diverse range of products to food manufacturers, caterers, restaurants, bakers and retailers throughout Australia and overseas.

Peercore Holdings began life as a small business, recycling and rendering meat by-products. In 1984, the company diversified its operations and established a modern, fully automated ‘’state of the art’’ edible oil refinery.

Further developments have seen a wide range of high quality products marketed including margarine, shortenings, oleos, salad and frying oils.

Both domestic and international customers can expect reliable delivery of any Peercore product as a result of their computerised and fully automated production line which can easily adapt to the manufacture of any of the varied range of oils and margarines.

Whats critical
As the company grew in the late eighties/early nineties, it became obvious that the existing Unisys systems were not providing the requisite information to enable the company to grow profitably. The legacy system lacked the ability to provide accurate data, leaving managers with an unclear picture of production, inventory and profitability.

Finding the right solution
Reviews of available applications and accompanying costs, lead to a decision to develop inhouse. This was seen as being more cost effective solution with the benefit that the application would be built to Peercore requirements. There was also a requirement to not compromise on business efficiency by being locked into software. Owning the source code allows continuous improvement in supporting operational requirements.

Initially elements of ERP were built, such as manufacturing, sales & distribution, procurement and inventory. This has subsequently grown to encompass full ERP (including financials) and SCM functionality, plant maintenance, automated weighbridge as well as a traffic light system to manage vehicle access to the production facilities.

The payoff
By having an application tailored to their requirements has lead to efficient business systems which reflect on the total cost of operation. This has made the cost per unit of output significantly lower than industry average resulting in Peercore Foods being very competitive, providing the capacity for growth. Being a fully integrated system, Peercore provides the capability of monitoring key performance indicators, allowing corrective action to be taken where necessary.