The Project:

The initial concept was based on the fact that Minch Norton is one of the few malt producers that has its barley supplied directly by farmers on contract rather than purchasing it from grain traders. This means that for a given batch of malt the company has product traceability back to approximately ten farmer suppliers. This gives it a unique selling point and the idea was to capitalise on this by offering customers the facility to use the web to track the malt they were being supplied with through the production and delivery systems. At the same time one of the executives in the company had the idea of establishing a malt trading portal. This stimulated a debate within the company about its future strategy and market positioning. The company decided that it needed to address the strategic issue first before proceeding with the traceability project.

Consultants were employed to help the company to assess its strategy and where e-business should fit with this strategy. This proved to be an invaluable exercise and it emerged that to be a success as a manufacturer of malt Minch Norton needed to be supplying the top 10-15 brewers in the world. As part of the feasibility study, the company spoke to a sample of its customers including ten of the top twenty brewers in the world to see what they would like e-business to do for them. It emerged from this research that customers want to develop long-term one-to-one partnerships with suppliers and that any e-business project should aim to facilitate this, e.g. through reduced administration, improved customer service, electronic transactions, with product traceability a bonus but not a critical element of the process. The idea of a malt trading site did not fit in with this vision.

The e-business project was revised to include an upgrade of the existing quality control system and production data system in order to enable data to be up-loaded to an interactive web site that could be accessed by customers. However in discussions with two major customers, it emerged that they did not want links from a common web site because of concerns over security. Instead separate web sites, customised to the needs of each customer are being developed. The ERP systems of both companies will be linked via these web sites. This will have major benefits for Minch Norton as it will provide secure access to demand data from customers and enable better planning of the production process and stock holding. In turn, customers will be able to place orders on line, draw down relevant production, delivery and quality control data and reduce stock holding.

A new ERP system for Minch Norton was critical to the success of the project. At the time, the cost of installing a new system was prohibitive and it took some time for the company to find an alternative solution, partly because the technology required did not exist until a year ago. The solution devised involves linking into the ERP system of a U.K. sister company using leased lines and effectively 'piggy- backing' on this system. This part of the project will be the next phase to be implemented.