What to ask a production software vendor for a food plant

Before any demo, send the vendor one recipe, one batch sheet and one month of stock entries from your store ledger, and ask them to build it. A description is not enough.

Choose a hard product, one with a co-product, a rework step, or an ingredient bought by the sack and issued by the scoop. A demo on a plain biscuit proves little.

Watch who does the work. If the vendor’s analyst asks sharp questions about your batch size, your sieve rejects and the units your packing hall counts in, that is a good sign.

Recipes change. A supplier switch alters the moisture and a customer asks for less salt, yet the old formula must not vanish from the records. Ask which version each batch used.

Then ask about yield. Can the system hold an expected output for each batch, then show the shortfall after the run, so a supervisor sees the loss before the next shift starts? Can it carry a by-product such as bran, whey or oil cake as a stock item with its own lot, its own unit and its own value?

Ask to see the variance report that sets standard use against actual issue for one batch, and note whether it appears on the screen or needs a custom job. Custom jobs mark a limit.

Food needs lot tracking from receipt to dispatch. Ask the vendor to trace one finished lot back to its ingredient lots on screen, then forward to the customers who received it, and time the whole exercise.

Expiry is the next test. Does stock show the best before date? Does issue follow the earliest expiry first? Will the system warn the store keeper before a lot goes out of date on your own shelves, early enough to offer it to a buyer?

Then test a hold. A blocked lot should be impossible to issue to the line or load onto a truck until a named person releases it, so try both actions on screen.

Your accounts package holds the ledgers. Ask exactly what moves across, whether purchase bills, sales invoices, stock value or only totals, and how an error is corrected on both sides once it has posted.

Floor users decide success. Can a store keeper scan a barcode label from a tablet beside the racks, and can a packer enter output without a keyboard-heavy screen?

Support deserves its own questions. Who answers when a batch will not close at night, and how quickly, and which two food customers will take your call to confirm it?

Write every question on a sheet with three columns headed shown live, promised and not available, and count only the first column when you total the scores. Promises are cheap.

Put your store keeper and production supervisor in the final demo, because they test the screens in ways a manager never would and spot a clumsy entry step. They will catch what you miss.

Pick the vendor with the most items shown live on your own recipe, then ask for a short paid pilot on one product line before committing the whole plant.