Company: Wherefour, Inc.

Website: www.wherefour.com

Technology Snapshot: A new release of Wherefour, Inc., food and beverage manufacturing and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system software provides a suite of new options designed to integrate processing and discrete manufacturing, which aids bakeries and confectionery businesses in particular. In addition, some brewery specific features have been added in version v1.8.3, which was released Sept. 9.

Along with creating production runs to produce a specific quantity of finished inventory, Wherefour now has a product assembly option for building goods from finished inventory or doing a combination of both, said Matt Brown, company founder and CEO. This is particularly useful for operations, such as bakeries, that may wish to run production based on the exact number of items in a customer order or batch of customer orders and then assemble the production into different packaging units and case quantities, Brown said.

Changes specific to breweries include adding cask, carboy, keg and split to production unit options, and inventory can be traced to the barrel level including current location. Regardless of the type of production selected, the Wherefour demand-forecasting “what-if” tool provides an instant analysis of the number of production runs that can be completed based on current inventory, and the software will calculate the exact raw material quantities needed if shortfalls are detected, Brown said. Inventory forecasting features also have been enhanced to include purchasing lead times for advance planning.