Oracle ERP for Food & Beverages.

How does ETHX Softcon implement Oracle ERP for food and beverage manufacturers?

ETHX Softcon implements Oracle Fusion Cloud and E-Business Suite for food and beverage manufacturers and distributors, focusing on process manufacturing, lot and expiry control, recall and traceability. Fusion Process Manufacturing is configured for formulas, batches, yields, co-products and by-products, with EBS Process Manufacturing supported for legacy estates. Lot-controlled items use FEFO picking, shelf-life rules, hold and release, and expiry alerts, integrated with warehouse management. Recall workflows provide one-up, one-down lot tracing, mock recall drills and an audit trail.

Quality coverage includes QC sampling, HACCP, allergen control and certificates of analysis, and design and operations are aligned with FSMA and HACCP in collaboration with the client's food safety team. Cold-chain temperature data is integrated through OIC and IoT with exception alerts, and direct-store-delivery and route accounting are supported. Delivery runs from assessment and design of the item, lot and formula model to build, including label printing and QC capture integration, a two-to-four-week pilot line with real production runs, and plant-by-plant rollout with HACCP team validation.

What should food and beverage companies plan for in an Oracle ERP programme?

Food and beverage companies should plan the ERP around lot-level traceability, allergen control and shelf-life management, because regulators and retail customers expect a producer to identify affected product quickly and accurately. These requirements drive the lot model, the formula structure and the warehouse rules, so they need to be settled in design rather than added after go-live.

In the United States, the FDA's Food Traceability Rule under FSMA Section 204 requires firms that manufacture, process, pack or hold foods on the Food Traceability List to keep Key Data Elements (KDEs) for defined Critical Tracking Events such as receiving, transformation and shipping, and to provide an electronic sortable spreadsheet to FDA within 24 hours of a request in defined situations. The original compliance date of January 20, 2026 has been extended to July 20, 2028. For ERP design, the traceability lot code must be assigned and carried at the right events, receiving and shipping transactions must capture the required KDEs, and batch genealogy must be complete enough to produce the spreadsheet from system data rather than paper.

Allergen control is the second design driver. FDA recognises nine major food allergens (milk, eggs, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame), and labels must declare the food source of each one used. Allergen attributes therefore belong on ingredients and formulas so that label content, changeover sequencing and cross-contact controls can be derived from the item master. Third, shelf life: expiry dates, first-expired-first-out (FEFO) allocation, customer minimum remaining shelf-life rules and quality hold/release statuses should be enforced in inventory and order management. Finally, yields, co-products and grade attributes affect costing, so the costing method should be agreed with finance before formulas are loaded.